Roads to Nowhere
by A Penguin Named Jack
Summary: Years after the outbreak, America lies in ruins. Government has been reduced to the oppression of the quarantine zones. Rebels like the Fireflies fight a losing war. Hordes of bandits roam the lawless roads. No one is safe from infection. The last of us do what we can to survive. The first installment of a loosely connected series.
1. The Drifter: Prelude

**Disclaimers (read before reading)**

**This fanfiction is set from the perspective of multiple characters in a loosely connected nonlinear sequence. These include the Drifter, the Driver, the Soldier, and the Leader.**

**There will be references to characters and events from the game. Joel and Ellie might make a cameo at some point, but nothing is ever confirmed.**

**The Drifter storyline is presumably set after the Spring section in The Last of Us. **

**This story plagariz-I mean took inspiration from not only The Last of Us but other works such as The Road, World War Z (the book), I Am Legend (the book and bits of the movie), The Stand, Mad Max, and The Walking Dead. **

**Some of the locations mentioned in the story are real American towns and cities. However, descriptions of the areas may not be accurate to the actual places, seeing how I haven't been to most of these in real life and can only gauge through internet sources. Other places may be as fictional as this story itself.**

* * *

How long ago had it been? There had been no one with him back then. He had carried on him at first the tatters of what had once been a military jacket, and his military-issued backpack had bloated with anything he deemed useful in his scavenges. The military uniform, one of the last remnants of his old life, was long gone. That world had moved on. He had carried on him an emptied assault rifle, the ammo he had traded for cans of chunky sirloin tomato soup and a working flashlight with aplenty of spare AA batteries. It was still useful, as leverage against the gangs of marauders that he had encountered. Sometimes. He preferred to not remember the moments when they hadn't backed away. There had been too many close calls with his fellow man. A revolver had also accompanied his side in those days, just in case. But ammo had been scarce, and in those dry periods, he had taken to filing and shaping fake bullets from wood and plastic. If one didn't look too close, the revolver had appeared to be loaded and deadly. Like the rifle, it had helped him. Sometimes.

Military boy, he had been. It was in his blood, he guessed. Destiny, indoctrination, call it whatever the fuck you want. His pa and ma had flown jets during one of the Iraqi Wars. Before the Middle East there was his grandfather (on the Pa's side) in the Nam cutting down the slant-eyed Charlies with his M16. Beyond that, on both sides of the bloodline he had ancestry battlin' it out in Europe, out to stop Hitler. Hitler, he thought with almost mirth. Pa once told me that no matter how bad things got, we'd never stoop to that level again he thought. Well whoop-dee-fucking doo, pop, some of the shit I've seen done might make you wanna retract that statement.

He was barely a boy, churned fresh out of the academy right as the mutant cordyceps spores started turning people bloodthirsty crazy and splitting apart their heads. As soon as the shit splattered against the fan blades and America stood on the brink of ripping itself apart as the entire fucking globe burned, he was rushed out into duty. Those were the good old days. Back when we all thought that we could actually get the fucking situation under control. Preserve truth, justice, and the American way. He bleakly reminisced. Before we realized that there was no way we could keep the infected in control. Before the President blew his brains out on live-TV, just sparse months before the final TV broadcast its final bit of news. Before we the military realized that democracy had reached its expiration date and did what we thought had to be done.

They had been rushed all over the country, trying to establish whatever order they could. Their best bet had been the Quarantine Zones. He had participated in the establishment of the Denver Quarantine Zone, but Denver was long gone. The inmates ran that asylum now. Infection had been their biggest concern. Before they had invented the fancy ass scanners, it was all up to their judgment. When civvies refused to be strip searched and the sniffer dogs weren't at their disposal, his unit and surely many others had resorted to flat out extermination. To be on the safe side, y'know?

His conscience, always nagging at him from the corners of his subconscious, haunting him more with every act of brutality that he committed with the military in the name of reestablishing society. For the first few years, he ignored it. He convinced himself that what he did was what had to be done. But one day, he ran. Carrying nothing but the clothes he had been issued, some scant pieces of body armor, and what he needed. He sometimes thought of that as the last time that his morals had been in complete control. Before the instinct for survival took over. He knew that humanity as it had been was long weeded out. So he did what he did, to survive.

He wandered across the American west from place to place, like a drifting cowboy, settling briefly until he felt his choice of locales had become insufficient to his survival. He had been in Colorado, recalling a close call with a group of nomads led by a man who appeared to be unstable named David. That close call had cost him an eye. But loss of eye didn't matter. He shot fine with just one. He had also been in Utah, Nevada, and at last where he ended up California. His choice of destinations wasn't intentional, he had just followed where the highways led him. He had no grand plan for his continual survival, he just did whatever best fit the current situation. He did his best to avoid contact with his fellow men, if he did run into any, only stopping when he had to trade. Or kill. He had never fallen into the circles of any survivor groups, reluctant for any sort of longterm human contact. Until recently.

He didn't know how exactly it had happened, becoming responsible for all these people. It had started with a dog, as he recalled, that he had met on the road out of the abandoned Carson City quarantine zone perhaps a year ago. The passage of time was dull to him now, and it mattered little with the passing of civilization. He was fine with dogs. They were reliable, useful, and they still believed in a little thing called loyalty that most humans had abandoned years ago. But the people had started coming to him like magnets on the fridge door. They were other drifters he had met on his road, often those in need or those who had stopped to chat and trade in place of shooting and looting. He had offered some temporary alliance in place of his survival instinct's harsher judgment, alliance which had seemed to become permanent. Others had just tagged along until he had succumbed out of irritation and let them join his "group." Could it be his morals, his sense of humanity finally returning, after twenty fucking years? Doubtful, but he was curious.

Whatever it had been that had drawn these people to him, whatever it had been that had started making the hardened and disillusioned deserted start giving a caring fuck, whatever it had been that planted the seeds of a return to human values in a world without humanity, he knew not what it was.

What he did know was that the drifter had found a home. If wandering around with a bunch of other drifters now constituted a home. Ha ha. Layton Jaeger thought.

* * *

And then came the last days of May. Even with the encroach of summer, the coastal climate remained windy and the clouds often hung over their heads. Some days it rained tempestuously, belated April showers with no sign of May flowers. There was a bitter sensation of an encroaching bout of low temperatures on the day even when the sun hung. But on the bright side, even with the loss of civilization and the harsh weather, at least the sunsets were still brilliant.

The group of drifters had set up camp in an abandoned farm on the outskirts of the town of Half Moon Bay. They had been on the coast for a number of weeks now. They had traveled faster briefly through the chance meeting of Hugh, a man with a son and grandkids who had possessed a working RV that could fit the entire group. Hugh had seemed friendly enough, but then again so did David. The Drifter still kept his eyes on Hugh. Years of experiencing what the last of us had become had made that an instinct. The RV ran out of gas, and they pushed it to the farm where they set up their camp after quick scoutings showed no sign of infected, spores, or bandits in the area. People remained on guard with firearms, gas masks and shivs handy still.

The Drifter decided to head into town, regardless of the potential dangers, to see if he could scavenge anything. Gasoline, food eatable, medic al shit, whatever useful. Maybe even get some fucking entertainment for the kids. Just maybe it would help the kids, to escape from the harsh reality they lived in into some comic plot or portable video game. Or maybe it would do the opposite. He had asked one of his companions, Helena Sullivan, about that. She merely shrugged, a girl of few words. The other, a man who had merely introduced himself as Cutter, said it was worth a shot. Anything for the children, eh?

The few attractions that hadn't been boarded up on the road that led into town contained little of use. Jack was in the abandoned pony farm. A few bandages were all that were scavenged from another fallen farm. And for whatever goddamned reason there were shotgun shells in the overrun produce stand. They had passed another roadside attraction that appeared to have sold oversized carvings from before the outbreak, judging by the decaying statues of prehistoric beasts that had been reclaimed by nature. Helena had actually piped up, asking him what those were. He stared at her, asking that she honestly had never read a book about fucking dinosaurs. She shook her head and was quiet again. She was likely a post-pandemic child, unaware of all the things from the world before their time.

There was no way of telling what lay in Half Moon Bay as they entered the outskirts, passing a vandalized Straw Hat Pizza joint and a burnt out supermarket. Hostile bandits, perhaps. And it was more than likely to be infected in the heart of the town. It was a good thing they had come equipped, and Timothy knew that his companions were able to hold their own. The girl carried with her a revolver, a small dagger, and bow. In spite of her tall height, she did a good job of moving sneakily. Cutter, in spite of his apparent aged stature, was a competent brawler. He had with him a shotgun and for whatever godforsaken reasons a fucking CHAINSAW.

"Rev that up and you'll have every fucking clicker in the county on us."

"Makes me feel better, carrying it around."

"Right. Good luck carving through a bloater with that."

"What about them non-infected?"

"Any smart asshole would shoot you down before you could even get close to them with that."

There was a moderate breeze and they could hear the ocean waves lapping against the shore in the distance. They looked at the branching streets in front of them. The Drifter checked the bullets present in his scoped magnum and his hunting rifle. Enough, but not a lot. It was likely in a prolonged encounter with hordes of infected or many hunters that they would have to get up close and personal momentarily before retreating. Unsheathing his machete, he motioned west-ward, towards what seemed to be a shopping center and a gas station.

"Stay close. We have no idea what awaits us."

And thus they searched the area, rather uneventfully.

* * *

Sitting behind the counter of a decrepit pharmacy, the trio counted off what they had found. There had been a recently deceased clicker that had attached itself to the unlocked door that led inside to the medical supplies, too recent to have begun injecting spores. The Drifter had pried it off, but it wasn't a good sign. This meant that there had to have been infected in the area recently. As they had crept across the medical shelves, he kept expecting to bump into more infected or for infected to be alerted and rush into their isolated choke point. But none came.

A 1/2 empty bottle of morphine.

Some cans of soup in chicken, cream of 'shroom and tomato varieties.

Four cans of Special Cola.

One box of rifle ammunition and another near empty box of nine millimeter bullets.

A bottle of alcohol.

Penicillin.

Aspirin.

A full box of painkillers.

A near complete roll of bandages.

Beef jerky.

Cigarettes.

A lighter that appeared to work.

Batteries.

Stuff for the kids. Comic books, CDs (someone was carrying a portable player), books. Anything to distract them from reality, he guessed.

A decent find.

* * *

They headed towards the suburban area. They could do with adding just a bit more to their bounty before returning to the camp.

The Drifter started to find himself at unease. It was never like this before, to have not encountered anything. No traces of infected even with the dead body in the pharmacy, no signs of human cadavers. No signs that anyone besides a few infected were still in this seaside town. His good eye blinked as he scanned the area they were approaching through the scope of gun. His neutral features slowly frowned as he saw the wires and the explosives attached to the wirings. Someone had planted traps, and recent ones too. And to make matters worse, he saw the familiar limping forms of the clickers. And with clickers around, there were bound to be spores and other stages of infection in the area.

"Stay on guard." He advised his companions as they continued walking to the suburbs. "We aren't alone as we had thought."

* * *

The lookout watched the three strangers from his perch on the rooftop on one of the McMansions. Some balding old fart, an overgrown sperm hammock, and some one-eyed bullet catcher. They appeared to be armed, but it was no biggie. The Mavericks, as they called themselves, had slaughtered plenty of wannabe Rambos and Dirty Harries before. Best of all, they were all carrying backpacks that showed to full. Full of supplies that would soon be the property of Mavericks. He hoped that the Dude would let them keep the girlie alive for a little bit longer. The ladies and captives in the main safehouse weren't cutting it anymore, and he was reluctant to try the other option to satisfy his urges. He took a wooden pipe to his mouth and blew on it, producing a series of shrill whistles. The clickers caught it and began to scramble in confusion trying to pinpoint the source of the sounds. The air quickly filled with the shrill whistling from multiple spots across the town as the lookout conveyed his message. With any due luck, it would reach the Dude soon enough.

It was time for the greeting party to welcome these body bags.


	2. The Drifter: The Mavericks

"You hear that?" The Drifter asked his companions as he strangled the runner, breathing hard as the infected wheezed and kicked while trying to scratch his arm off. The runner lay still and he threw the body down. They had slowly made their way up the street, easily dispatching the few infected that they had come across.

"Sounded like people whistlin' through pipeholes. Some of the shit we did when we were kids." Cutter responded, his fingers ever so close to the shotgun slung around his back.

"I'm not liking the sound of this town the more and more time we spend in it. Perhaps we should head back to the camp. We scavenged enough…" The Drifter looked at the houses around them, all seemingly empty from the exterior. But who knows what may have been watching them from the corners and alcoves unseen?

"Calm down just a notch, chief. For all we know, just could be the wind." But Cutter lacked confidence in his words.

"We found enough supplies and we got the fuel we were looking for. No need to fuck everything up for ourselves and the group." The Drifter looked at the street left behind them.

"Yeah… just enough. Enough to last us, like what? A few more days on the road? And what will we do once we run out? More scavenging, then? Will there even be anywhere to search wherever we end up? Who knows what will happen to us the next few days. We have to be prepared, and what we have on us is not enough to be prepared. We're survivors, Jaeger. We have to take risks every now to ensure we'll still be surviving the next day. Just a few more hou-"

He thought he saw something glint through the darkened windows on one of the houses upon on the hill. His eyes blinked briefly, shocked by the spark. He had been ambushed enough times in enough different ways to quickly guess what the light had meant. His body reacting and moving its limbs before he had become aware that he was, the Drifter pushed his companions towards the nearest car.

"Wha-"

"Shut up. And keep your fucking heads down." The Drifter snapped at Cutter as he leaned against the car. He glanced over its hood, peeking back at the house. The glint in the window was gone.

"I swear, patch, you are getting paranoid. Scared the monsters will come in the night and take your other eye?" Cutter chuckled at him and stood up. The moment his noggin was exposed cleanly in the sights of the window, the shot was fired. The three all heard the faint sound of the bullet as it left the rifle, and Cutter in his last brief moments registered in his mind "Holy shit, Jaeger was right." just as the bullet hit him square in the forehead and his head sheared itself away in a spray of dark red mist.

The Drifter and Helena turned and their eyes fell on the slumped body of Cutter, Cutter's shirt stained red with blood. Blood and bodily fluids dripped, dripped from the spot where his head had been.

"Oh, fuck. Cutter… is he… ohshitohshitohshitohshit" Helena murmured as Cutter's blood streamed down her face in little red drops that reminded The Drifter of strawberry syrup he had drizzled in his mother's ice cream sundaes as a kid. The Drifter slapped the girl, snapping her out of her daze. "We aren't safe. We have to get out of

A clicker had heard the commotion. As it pinpointed the general location of the sound, in its frenzy it had run towards a wire bomb. Not something that the shooter had factored into his plan to kill the Bennies, but hey, adapt and survive.

here." As the alley adjacent to the car went up in flames and a bang as the clicker snapped the wire. It gave off a last few clicks in surprise as the shrapnel tore it apart. While they were out of the path of the shrapnel, the force knocked both the Drifter and the girl down. The cacophonous ringing in their ears left the Drifter and his companion disoriented, and his head rang like a thousand jarring bells screaming at him while he tried to make sense of his surroundings. Another shot rapidly glanced past the rear window of the car, taking away bits of glass that got stuck in his cheek. Shit, that could've been him. Why can't I hear? There's nothing but this damned ringing. The girl was shouting something at him now. She was desperately pointing at something beyond the car towards the house. The Drifter peeked again as another shot was fired.

Shit.

Runners. Clickers. And even a fucking bloater were all coming down in a mass towards the car they took cover behind. Bastard up in the house must've silenced his rifle. That's why they were the ones about to be swarmed. Cutter always kept a spare Molotov in his bag, perhaps even in death one of the first that he met would still help him stay alive. He reached through the bag, and he found the hard glass bottle with the rag crammed through its corkhole. Lighting the rag, he shouted but didn't hear his own words at Helena.

"Run. Don't stop for anything." And he threw the Molotov in the path of the advancing infected, dashing the streets with a blazing inferno as the bottle shattered as it impacted the cold black streets. The runners and clickers stopped in their tracks unearthing inhuman shrieks as the flames consumed their fleshy bodies, but the bloater continued through the fire its plating burnt horrifically. Its war cry rumblings reverberated through the empty streets as the two fled down the streets. The bloater pushed the car out of the way and it continued to slug down the streets waving its gargantuan arms wildly. The sniper continued to fire at them all the while, forcing the two to zig and zag erratically to throw his aim off course. A stalker hiding in the overgrown grasses leapt at the Drifter and as the two grappled the girl shot the beast off the Drifter showing his face with bits of brain and cordycep growth. The bloater continued towards them, and the Drifter fired back at the overgrown hulk not killing but slowing it down.

As they ran back the way they came, the sniper took the hollow wooden pipe to his lips and blew another whistle message towards the people in the center. No Bennies had wandered into the Mavericks' turf to take their shit and walked out alive. Everyone else before had learned it and these two insignificant Bennies wouldn't be any different.

* * *

They left Cutter's body and bag in the streets. There would be no time for a burial, no opportunity to retrieve the supplies in his bag.

* * *

For just a short second, the Drifter thought that they had made it out of the maw of the beast. That they could be spared a breather as they paused in front of the rotting gas station, the tanks of fluid long siphoned and the snack shack long ransacked.

"Cutter… he's…"

"Helena, his luck ran out and ours didn't. He was an idiot and got his brains blown out. We weren't and we are still fucking alive. A-L-I-V-E. That is what matters right now until we can get ourselves to fucking safety. Away from infected and away from fucking non-groupie human contact. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes… patch." Patch was Cutter's nickname for the Drifter and the term stung him a bit. But he didn't show it in his face or voice. They should never have continued up the path towards the suburbs. Cutter would still have been with them and they would be returning to the camp with supplies. But instead Cutter was now lying decapitated in the bloodied street and the infected were likely having a feast. They had lost all the supplies Cutter was carrying. He and Cutter hadn't always agreed after they joined together, but God be damned if the two hadn't looked out for each other as they made their way across the ruins of the American Pacific. Fuck a voice in his head said, it was his fault for suggesting that they continue looking and as thus end up losing one of the closest things you could call a bud in this new world order. Fuck that moral shit, the other voice told him. You are a goddamn survivor, and these are just some of things that happen. You should know. Cutter wasn't the first to die on your watch, and you know it. Your own life is the only thing left worth surviving for, these conscientious feelings of guilt and responsibility are only gonna get you killed the longer you hang onto them.

"What are we going to do?" The girl's question broke the Drifter's internal soliloquy.

"Give me a damn moment to think." He gritted at her. He lit one of the cigarettes they had found. Even wit the anti-tobacco ads filling the movie theaters, airport lobbies, and every goddamn spot on America known to man, his father had never really quit until the old man had developed lung cancer and croaked. _Calms the nerves like no other thing in this world will, Layton. Anything legal that is. Worth a hacking cough and yellow canines if you ask me. _The Drifter wondered if his father had still thought that way in those final moments in the hospital bed with a tumor and wires poked into his body.

Pop had apparently bullshitted him the whole time. The tobacco didn't calm his nerves or clear up the mess in his mind, it had just further irritated him. Disgusted, he took the cigarette from his mouth and as he breathed out the smoke that hung like an unyielding mist in the chilling cloudy day he flung it far. Litter-bug, some of the old neighborhood kids would've called him. But fuck them and the old neighborhood. They were long gone and the old rules were too. The old him was near gone too, but there was just that one part that kept hanging on.

"Give me the binoculars." He scanned the bare branch of roads in front of them, seemingly nothing at first but with a second pass his heart froze.

The hostile who had shot at them wasn't some overly trigger happy last man on earth-type wacko. He was a kill you for your shoes band of bros wacko. And there was a pick-up truck with a pair of his evident companions sitting in the back coming towards the two in the distance right now.

"Hide. In the station, somewhere they can't see us."

"Who?" asked the girl, obviously without the binoculars.

"Just shut up and follow my lead."

They sprinted into the abandoned snack shack, diving behind the counter. The rumbling of the truck's engine grew louder as it neared the station, and with a screeching skid it stopped just slightly beyond the last gas pump. Aw, fuck. The Drifter thought to himself. Focusing himself against the counter to adjust the hearing in his other ear, he tried to eavesdrop on some of the hostiles as they clambered out of the truck's back.

"Why we stopping here, Bodhi?" He heard a gruff voice snort. "This ain't part of our patrol."

"Johnny on Lookout Point C tweeted he shot at some Bennies that had shit we could jack. Took one of them out and he'll retrieve deadyman's shit once the popped cornheads clear out. We checkin' to see if any of them stop here to grab a breather and we cap their caps."

So they would have to sneak out of there somehow. The Drifter didn't know how many people were around them now, but even without the numbers he doubted their ability to take all of them on without knowing the full arsenal capabilities of the hostiles around them. Beach Boys, he called them. They would have to escape without alerting the Beach Boys to the presence of their camp. But how… that was a big problem and improvising could be fatal. There was a back door, he knew that. Crouching steadily, he crept towards it, doing his best to remain out of the sight of the chatting Beach Boys outside. He tried the handle and out of all the fucking doors in the world it had to be the one that was fucking locked. And he had broken the last of his shivs days ago taking out roaming clickers. Well, there went Plan A.

"You gonna go in there, or stand there gawking at that goddamn counter all day, Bodhi?"

"Don't see anything. But I swear I heard some fucking rat scamper. A fucking rat on two legs. I don't want to go in there for a crazy Benny to knife me in the ribs. And I know you ain't going either."

"Watch and learn then. We smoke the rats out." He heard one of the Beach Boys bending down and rustling through a backpack. Oh, shit, if the Beach Boy was planning to use what he thought he was…

"Get your gas mask on. Right now." He whispered to Helena. She nodded and wordlessly rummaged through her bag, bringing out the sinister mask and strapping it on her head. He slumped his backpack to the floor, hastily rushing through its contents to find his mask. shitohshitohshitohshit where was it. On all the days to misplace your stuff, he thought to himself. And then he heard the whooshing noise of an object sharply cutting its way through the air as it completed a thrown arc. A spherical jagged metal globe landed at his feet.

And it exploded in front of his eyes, releasing a blinding detonation of smoke. Damn it, thought the Drifter. What a lousy way to go out.

"Someone's coughing in there! In here, boys! It'll be a bitching turkey shoot!" The sound of many rushing steps heading towards the door of the station snack shack. The Drifter stumbled around, trying to regain his orientation as the smoke cleared. He hacked as his lungs forcibly and roughly cleared of the bitter smoke. His eye stung and watered. He couldn't see clearly, just blurred outlines. One of the outlines was tall and bulky, it was getting close-

The Beach Boy slammed into the Drifter, lifting him by the shoulders and smashing him against the racks of the snack shack. Near emptied boxes went flying as the racks collapsed. His ribs felt close to disintegrating into microscopic bits of dust and his spine piercingly ached as he hit the racks. His eye were still stinging, he wildly tried to force his assailant off of him as the two went down onto the ground. But he was disadvantaged and his opponent began to wrap brawny hands around his neck, choking. NONONONONONONONONO ran continually like a broken vinyl stuck repeating on the record player for an agonizing eternity. It was harder to keep his eye open, it was harder to breath…

"Hear those snap crackle pop Rice Krispies in ya head, ya honky fucker? Those ain't Rice Krispies, they yo brain cells going snap, crackle, and pop till they all die and you dead too!" The large man on top of him laughed and his foul breath noxiously made its scent known to the Drifter. His hands frantically grabbed at the dusty stained ground around him, desperately hoping to grab ahold of a bottle or anything that he could use.

"No use, honky! This is where you dieaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!" The man released his hands and the Drifter graciously welcomed the rush of oxygen that entered his lungs as he scrambled to regain his footing. A sense of orientation was returning to him, but he still felt appallingly faint. His eyes still stung but his eyesight was staring to reshape itself. He could see blood gaping from several stabs in the side of the now attacked, Helena delivering a kick to the behind of the man's knee. A gruesome crack resonated through the chaotic snack shack, and the man's screams added to the frenzied chorus.

"On your feet, asshole." She snarled at him. She forced the man up, holding her revolver at the side of his head. With her other arm around his neck, Helena pushed the way out of the station where the other Beach Boys had gathered. The Drifter followed behind her, magnum at ready.

"Alright, Mavs… on the count of one, two three, we light those Bennies u-Oh shit, they got Roach!" The Beach Boy who was presumably Bodhi screamed in terror at the plight of his companion. He was shabbily dressed, torn shorts and a sleeveless vest with no shirt underneath. He was holding a small pistol at the pair, his hands now quivering as he saw his bud's life in Helena's indifferent grasp.

For a pithy tick of the clock, the Drifter and Helena were locked in an unnerving impasse with the Beach Boys. They stood, their weapons trained on the one-eyed man and the tall girl. They had all the firepower to annihilate these two with just the slightest nudge on a trigger, but fuck, Roach was a big boy close to the Dude in charge. Shit, why did they let that headstrong fucker run into the station? Helena continued to press the muzzle of her revolver against the steadily sweating side of Roach, who was now begging her to release him. She kneed him in the back in answer, causing him to scream again.

The Drifter didn't like the odds. Some of them had shotguns and fucking submachine guns. One wrong slip and the two would be annihilated in a red rain of blazing lead. He started to speak up when Helena rather vociferously made the demand for him.

"Alright, dickheads. Go back in your little gas-powered four-wheeler, drive off like you never saw us, and I'll give you your buddy Roach with nothing but his pride killed today. Deal or no deal?"

"You took supplies from our city, you bitch! Hand over your bags and we'll let _you _live!" The incensed mustachioed tan man with the shotgun spat at her. "We outnumber you!"

"No, asshole. I don't negotiate with son of a bitch killers like you. You let us walk out of town unharmed with all the shit we scavenged and we'll return big boy Roach to you. Isn't that what you want, Roachy?" She cooed to her hostage.

"Puh-puh-puh-lease, g-gu-guys. I don't wanna die!" Roach begged as he started to quiver.

The Drifter chimed in as he kept the magnum focused on the group in the front of them. Only four of them… if he shot enough maybe he could take them all out. But then again, where did that happen besides the old Leone westerns? And by God's wrath, he was no Clint Eastwood in a poncho smoking a cigar.

"Listen, uh, Beach Boys. We didn't intend for there to be any trouble…if we'd known that the shit in the abandoned buildings meant so much to you, we wouldn't have touched it. I'm sure we can negotiate som-"

"You hear what the Benny just called us? B-E-A-C-H B-O-Y-S! Beach Boys! Beach Boys! We ain't shit Beach Boys! We the Mavericks, we gonna let this fucker badmouth us?" One of them snarled cutting off the Drifter.

"P-p-p-please, l-l-let them g-"

"Fuck you, Roach! You got yourself into that shit, we ain't helping you out here!" And the scrawny unkempt woman with the submachine gun fired at Roach, the bullets shredding holes into his body like an assembly line machine.

Helena gasped in surprise and dropped Roach, who died whimpering. As his head hit the ground like a wet fruit smashing pavement, the remaining Mavericks were readying their aims. Already the presumed-Bodhi had fired off a shot and his compatriots were soon to follow.

It was the fastest he had ever fired that many shots at once, The Drifter later decided.

The cylinder of the magnum rotated clockwise four times with deafening clicks as bullets went through the barrel and out of the muzzle as the Drifter jammed his finger on the trigger. Presumed-Bodhi, the nearest to the Drifter, had no time to register the deadly train of filed lead as it hit him directly in the mouth. If time could be slowed down in the moment his head was reduced to a fine red mist of human wine, you could see every tooth that flew dislodged in his jaw as the bullet shrapnel tore apart his entire head sending it flying in a blur of multiple chunks of meat, bone, and brain. The second bullet caught Mr. Shotgun square in the chest, leaving a noticeable hole where his heart should've been. The Maverick who had thrown the smoke bomb dropped to the ground howling in excruciating torment as the third bullet crippled his knee. The hand of the submachine gun lady exploded as the fourth bullet hit it, the bitch letting rip an animalistic shriek as she dropped her gun. Pure luck and nowhere close to as cleanly or badass as Clint would've done it, but the Drifter was amazed that he had pulled off such a stunt. The submachine gun lady, in her last ditch death charge, took a knife from her pocket and rushed the Drifter in a starburst of adrenaline. He quickly unslinged his rifle, hitting her in the cheek with the butt, resulting in an amalgamation of bloodied teeth and spittle flying from her lips. Smoke Boy was crawling towards the downed submachine gun, the desperation and torture evident in his gritting face. Just as his hand was about to grasp the gun, Helena calmly strode over to the weapon and kicked it away. The right sleeve of her jacket was bled through, but her expression disturbed the Maverick as his eyes pleaded with her. It truly unnerved him, how nonchalant and sadistic her gaze at him was as she pointed her revolver at him.

"Please… please… don't… we sur-"

"You wiped out, asshole. Playtime's over, 'dude.'" And Helena pulled the trigger.

* * *

He couldn't resist the opportunity when the last Maverick came to, her stump of a hand having been bound up with some of the bandages that had been in their truck. There had been plenty of things in the truck, much of which could be beneficial to their own group. One of these things that the Drifter didn't quite see the need for was some rope, which now bound the survivor's legs and arms together. Her reddened cracked eyes gazed at him, in hatred and begging.

"Do you feel lucky, punk?" Before the outbreak, the Drifter had been a fan.

"F…fuck you. You monster… you're mad! Nothing but a rabid animal!"

"So says the people killing others for just passing through. And I've met enough people like you to know the other things you love to do." Helena uncaringly informed the woman as she struggled to break her bindings.

"When they catch up to you, bitch, they'll rape you every day. They'll do so many things to your tight little cunt you'll wish they'd killed you. They should've let me have a go at you with just may hands, slut! I would've bit your eyes out!" The woman tried to bite at Helena's heels, who nimbly stepped away.

"Who says they will follow?" The Drifter asked.

"The Dude has more of us stationed every where in town, where you'll never think to look. Even now, someone is probably watching us. And they're sending reports across town. And soon enough, the Dude will send over more trucks and they'll kill you and rape your whore. Don't think about running, fucker, cause we'll track you all across the state and we won't stop until you are de-" The Drifter shut the overly talkative and cocky for her current predicament woman by kicking her in the belly.

"Then I guess we'll just have to send a message to whoever watching that it isn't worth their while to follow us."

"What… what's that?" The woman panted in between breaths as the Drifter showed her a large container of alcohol. It had been in the back of the truck. The Drifter uncapped it and threw the cap aside into the weeds.

"Just the magic that goes into the bottles and makes them a pleasure to burn with. And one of your buddies had this on him. Roach was his name, I believe?" The Drifter showed her the lighter shaped like a surfboard. He personally couldn't believe the lengths he had gone with torturing this woman instead of simply killing her, but then again it wasn't the first he had tortured. It was like an entirely different Layton Jaeger had taken over for the operation.

The Drifter doused the woman in the alcohol, she beginning to sob and thrash erratically as he did it. He was reminded of Michael Madsen as he danced to the music of Stealers Wheel after he had cut off the cop's ears and prepared to light said cop off in that grisly scene from the movie that his father claimed had made him storm out of the theater. The differences were that it was a hand instead of an ear, there was no soothing 70s music playing, and he found no personal satisfaction in what he did. He made a trail of alcohol all the way to the door of the truck, where he stopped and dumped the rest in a puddle. Mounting the truck door, he called to the woman.

"If you roll fast enough, maybe you could escape before you become oceanside BBQ."

He belted himself to the driver's seat, Helena riding shotgun as she gazed out of the window at the sky. She had taken off her jacket, she was disinfecting and bandaging her arm up right now. He put one of the CDs that they had found scavenged in the car's music player, skipped the first track as it was one of his odd tendencies when playing music on a drive and hit play. He did not look at the disc that he had inserted, and as music started playing, somewhat ironically it was the Blue Oyster Cult's "Burning for You" on the _Fire of Unknown Origin _album.

A small flame was emit from the surfboard lighter. He flicked it out the window and rolled it up, driving away as the lighter hit the puddle of alcohol.

Helena turned the volume up, to drown out the discomforting barbaric but all too human screams behind them. Although it was music from a bygone era she had never heard before, she hummed along as she finished wrapping up her arm.


	3. The Drifter: Aftermath

Walk-E-Talkies. One had been in the front of the truck as they drove of, the Drifter had noticed. Aside from the whistles, this must've been how the Mavericks scattered across Half Moon Bay kept in touch. To his surprise, the Walk-E-Talky burst with static and the sound of a gruff yet laid back male voice.

"Uh hey, man. This is like, the Dude. I was having a great day, finally produced enough coffee beans in one of my gardens to like brew my first pot in years. So yeah, I was having a blast until I hear that you Bennies run into my town with the intent of stealing my shit. Then I hear you kill four of my bros and one of my divas. You go run off with one of my favorite trucks too! Now, I am understandably pissed but this ain't your last chance, man. If you just politely drive back and let me brain you, I'll let your girl live and we won't follow her. Deal, man?"

"My offer?" He replied. "This." And he had thrown the Walk-E-Talky from the window of the truck.

* * *

The Drifter did not converse with Helena through the entirety of their drive back to the abandoned farm fields where the rest of their group had set up camp. The two barely acknowledged the presence of the other, a quick nod of the head or glance sporadically. The roads were barren, only a few rotting husks that had once been Toyotas and Fords left decayed in the road. Presumably the Mavericks that had taken over Half Moon Bay had cleared the rest of the vehicles, for this couldn't have been all the cars that were abandoned and left to perish. The remnants of the cars provided a standing testament to the great panic that had followed in the days after zero hour, when the highways had morphed into clogged arteries of human traffic that put the greatest of big city rush hour jams to immeasurable shame. The Drifter remembered the highways that led from Chicago to Indianapolis, never-ending miles of cars that stretched into the horizon that were often trapped without movement for sometimes days on end. For the lucky, they were at front driving to wherever they thought was safe from infection. Destinations that were never reached. The most unlucky were trapped in their vehicles as waves of infected slaughtered their way through or when the military began to massacre their own countrymen to manage the herds of refugees streaming into the quarantine zones.

The Drifter had been born and raised in the Chicago metropolitan area. It had been one of the areas hit hardest by the initial outbreak of the Cordyceps, and as such no quarantine zone had ever been established out of that metropolis, for it had been deemed by the high-up brass that it was too far gone to salvage. In the ruins of the streets he had walked as a child, only the infected and gangs of hunters treaded their ground the days he wandered through the forsaken California landscape. He should've felt saddened or nostalgic, he thought, about what had happened to his old world. But instead, there was only emptiness.

There had been several quarantine zones set up in this state, he remembered. San Francisco was still around according to Helena who had presumably originated in that zone, but the actions of Fireflies and other resistance groups and the military response had made daily civilian life in the city of Saint Francis a waking hell. It was no wonder why many civvies were utilizing the aid of smugglers to escape into the surrounding wastes of what had been the Bay Area, even if the life that awaited them there bode no better. Sacramento, formerly the point on the map where the Austrian Oak once called the shots, was abandoned and overrun by infection. Ghastly rumors, he had heard, of whole buildings and bridges consumed by the port-mortem growth of dead fungi heads. Los Angeles had fallen as early as the Drifter's days in the military. Like other zones which had all been overthrown in the gradual passage of these twenty years such as Pittsburgh and Memphis, it had become a desolate death trap for any strangers who dared stroll into city limits. San Diego, although he had heard no official confirmation to its status, had allegedly been exorcised of its US Military presence by a joint alliance between the Fireflies, a civvie uprising, and an abundance of renegade units. Military units from the lone quarantine zone in Arizona, location unprovided, had been dispatched in preparation for reclamation. This rumor had come to him from another member of his group, who had told him many questionable rumors.

All this and more the Drifter thought about on the ride back to his camp. Those who had been lost like Cutter, those who were at risk of being lost. Bittersweet memories of the past and an ominous future, if you could call it a future, that lay ahead of him shrouded in darkness. The Drifter remembered all the times that he considered ending his journey these past two decades, one bullet to the head and it would be all over. But for whatever godforsaken reason, he continued on. For at his side walked some new breed of irrational hope, that convinced him to continue even at the moments he should've turned back. He knew better, but somewhere in him there was a part that believed things would return to the way they were one day. Kids would be kids again. New issues of Savage Starlight would be published every month. A Fourth of July family reunion BBQ with fireworks afterwards would be held annually. Slurpee machines would flow. Deep dish pizzas would be taken out of ovens, dripping with toppings and grease. The current generation would be enthralled by their eras' musical talents, while the precursors would shake their heads in bewilderment. People would be waiting in line at midnight releases. The inner goodness of humanity would rise all over again. But that was wistful thinking. Those notions were too far gone to be salvaged.

* * *

They parked the truck at the side of the road, hopping towards the overgrown fields with their bags saddled on them. Somewhere, in the heart of the camp of impromptu tents and one big RV, a dog was barking as it caught scent of its second master returning. Two children were chasing each other around, nothing better to do, within the confines of the tents. An old man in a wide cap and wiry stubble plucked the strings on a guitar, while his son sat nearby preparing some makeshift fishing hooks with a semi-automatic shotgun resting at his feet. Emerging from the forest was a well-built but averaged-heighted man of Oriental features who had on him a bow and hatchet, dragging behind him the catch of a forest hunting expedition. A wild-haired man with dirtied eye glasses in a stained plaid shirt sat and jacket sat on a decapitated stump, playing solitaire. A brown-skinned lady who was rather petite had prepared several baskets of harvested goods from the wild fields.

These people made up his group, he had met all of them at varying points in his journey across the American Pacific and he had become responsible for them. An unofficial leader, if you must.

"Holy crap, Mr. Layton, where'd you find the truck? Can I ride in it?" said one of the kids, running up to him.

"Um, maybe later. Here, Jake, take this gas. Give it to your gramp, get him to fill it up as fast as he can and call me once he's readied the RV."

"One thing, Mr. Layton."

"What?"

"Don't you mind? Grandpa Hugh does when I say words like crap."

"Take a look at the world around us, Jake. Do you think that it really matters what kids say anymore? Your gramp is one of the old people, from the period when it did matter. Just a force of habit for him, based on my research." He motioned to the ruined remnants of human civilization and the encroaching wrath of nature around them. He winked at the kid with his eye.

"Should I tell Grandpa you said that?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Oh, there's no need for him to tell me. I heard it all." The old man in the cap was strolling over to them right now with a subdued smile on his lips. He was old, but he remained by and large vigorous. That was what the world demanded of the elderly these days.

"Well… shit." The Drifter did his best to look guilty.

"Mind the boy, Layton. Give me that, I don't think a young one his size can handle all that fuel." And Hugh lugged two of the gasoline containers in his grasp. Jake ran off past them, back towards the tents. Hugh's son Scott briefly ignored the work on his fishing hooks to glance at them. Similar to how the Drifter kept a suspicious eye on Hugh, Scott kept his eyes on the Drifter.

"Now, Layton, what's this I hear about you planning to move right now? We just finished settling down here. Would be a mighty hassle to pack all that up again in the RV in such a quick period of time. Can't we stay for a few more days, gather more from the fields?"

"I'll give you a few hours at least, so everyone else here can get ready best they can. But I'm not too pleased with tipping our toes in these waters, even for just one more minute, given the shit Helena and I have just been through."

Scott had walked up to them, standing in between his father and the Drifter. "Wait, you and Helena? What happened to Cutter, he went with you right?" Cutter, unlike the Drifter, hit it well with everyone they had inducted into their ragtag group. Cutter trusted the, they trusted Cutter. The same could not be said of everyone with the Drifter. Cutter, in a sense, had been the oil that kept every gear in the machine working in perfect harmony. His passing didn't bode well for the future.

"Aw fuck, you aren't telling me that…" Scott's eyes darted to the truck, where Helena was siphoning its remaining gasoline. His eyes locked on her.

"You let one of our friendliest, most communicable, and important men die out there?" Scott accused the Drifter. An evident tone of malice was developing in his voice.

"It wasn't like that. I warned him to play for keeps, we were ambushed and he wasn't careful! These things fucking happen, Scotty boy!"

"Right. These things just happen, to THE REAL FUCKING LEADER OF OUR GROUP. And will you be saying that once, let's say, Melinda dies? When Garrett dies? When I die? When everyone has died with death about to clamp its jaws down and make a Happy Meal out of you? Christ, why couldn't have been you or the crazy girl instead of Cutter?"

"Hugh, leave us be. Prep the RV. We drive back the way we came. Too much of a risk going back into town." With the old man running off, "So, you think that as long as Cutter lived the rest of us could've passed without making your world a poorer place?" The Drifter asked.

"I know it. Cutter knew what he was doing; he got along with us well and made us all feel we were wanted and significant. When have you ever done such a thing? I know why you're always looking at my pop like that. The only reason we're still here with your group is because of Jake and Stevie. But I know that if my precious angels weren't here, you'd have killed us on the spot for the RV. I know how paranoid you can really get, Layton. Why else would you have spent all those years alone? Underneath that badass eyepatch, you are nothing but a busted jumble of jigsaw pieces unfit to lead us. If you know what's right, you'll let one of us take over. You may have formed us, but you sure as hell can't administrate us."

"What about Helena?" The Drifter asked him, showing no expressive reactions to Scott's damning words. He had heard words like these before, in days that had long passed and moved on.

"You distrust me and my pop, honest working surviving men. But yet, you don't lift an eyelid with that… that… why the preferences with Helena, Layton? She your girlfriend? Sissy? Bastard? Can't help ogling her feminine parts, sicko? She's a bigger danger to the group than me or pop are. She's anti-social. She's barely cooperative. She's done the least out of all us, you included. And I see the flashes she gets in her eyes sometimes. So you better start getting your 'I've got my eyes on you.' priorities straight, shitface. And if I find out that you were given a choice between their lives, and picked Ms. Brunette Long Legs over goddamn Cutter…" Scott stormed off muttering under his breath.

The Drifter stood at the spot where the road met the wilderness, gazing at the bustling camp in front of him as the men and women who were meant to follow his lead worked to prepare for the departure. He thought about it, and considered that perhaps Scott was right. But he wouldn't be so quick to hand over his responsibilities in spite of the weight they bore upon him, for that would've been the easy way out. Cutter, and so many more ghosts from his past, would've chastised him for it.

* * *

They left just as the sun began to set; leaving behind little traces of the brief stay that Half Moon Bay's surrounding hills had been host to.

Inside the RV, Scott drove slowly as his eyes focused on a steadily increasingly cluttered road and Hugh sat by his side. Jake and Stevie gaped over the entertainment goodies that they had found in Half Moon Bay, the comics and novels and CDs. Helena had found and packed most of them. She and Melinda sat next to the kids, answering their questions about the stuff although Melinda answered much more frequently. To Helena, much of this stuff was as foreign to her as the kids found it. It wasn't her fault she didn't know much about Dawn of the Wolf novels or The Bash albums.

The Drifter, Layton Jaeger, sat with the Hunter, Garrett Lin, and the Taleteller, William Lincoln. Cards were spread out between them, but no one made the move to start any games.

"Texas Hold-em?" The Taleteller offered.

"No chips." The Drifter. But in all honestly, he just hated poker and had real bad luck.

"Well then, I'm all out of card games I know how and want to play." The Taleteller pouted.

"Sucks to be us, then. Three dudes stuck in a car together with nothing to do. In front of the kids or girls, that is." The Hunter moved his hands in a jerking motion.

"I'd watch that buddy movie." The Taleteller interjected.

"I doubt we'd be able to separate the kids from the shit I found. It'll be exclusively theirs, for the couple of days I estimate, before they run through it all." The Drifter commented.

"Well fuck, a long drive with nothing to talk about." The Hunter sighed, prompting some laughter up front from Scott.

"Don't bullshit me, we got plenty of cow pie to talk about." The Taleteller, his eyes gleaming as his mind scanned its own recesses for something new to use.

"And here we go again…" The Hunter moaned.

"Don't mind him. Would like something to take my mind off what I've been thinking about…" The Drifter in defense of the Taleteller.

"Hey man, don't blame yourself for Cutter. It sucks that he died, but we've all had people close to us die at this point, haven't we? Like you sometimes say, these things just happen! You are going to be a kickass leader, just like the Big Boss!" The Hunter tried to assuage him.

"Who the fuck is Big Boss?" The Drifter asked.

"Um…. it's a long story…" The Hunter said. "My dad played these video games before the outbreak, and he'd tell me about them when I was raised i-" but he was interrupted.

"So, is it bro bonding time or is it Will's Story Time?" The Taleteller piped out sarcastically.

"Go ahead, hit us with your best shots." The Hunter finally gave in.

"The current year is 2033, if anyone has been keeping track, right? And know how the entire globe has been devastated by an evolved fungus? Well, in one of my travels, I hear from someone that claimed to be a Russian refugee that they didn't quite have the same problem with spores that we did. But they in a world of shit just as bad still, got in it the same we got into ours. Moscow's like totally irradiated now, according to him, and everyone in Russia is now underground or a walking mutant monster face thing. How's that for starters, huh?" The Taleteller asked them.

"I honest to God hope that you made that up in your head." The Drifter jokingly held his face in his palm.

"Wait till you hear what I got cooking in the pot right now." The Taleteller smiled.

"No more conspiracy stuff, okay? I got sick of hearing your rumors about how the US government orchestrated the whole damn fungus infection in a plan to control the rising world population that went horribly wrong." The Hunter made a how-about-no motion with his hands.

"Huh, and I had so much more juice in those departments too. But I feel honorable today, and I comply with your request."

"So does that mean you're out of shit to tell, then?" The Hunter guffawed.

"No way, mate. There is this one I've been saving… about a little county called Jackson in Wyoming."

"And why would we, as current Californians, give a fuck about Wyoming?" The Hunter.

"Because this county in Wyoming has a little something that most of us outside the QZs lack: e-lec-tri-city. There was like this group of enterprising survivors including some former Fireflies and they all banded together to rebuild and power up the dam. So now they got this town that has all the amenities of the good old 21st century way of life before everything went to hell. Exceptions like Internet and TV, but hey, stepping stones. And the people there, they ain't the bad guys like the military fuckers in the QZs. They believe, honest hearts, in serving the good of the people, not crushing the people under their heels!" The Taleteller seemed like he almost believed in what he was spewing at them.

"And what else, Santa Claus visits every day so Jackson County enjoys perpetual Christmas?" The Drifter asked.

"Ah no, no shit that ludicrous. But hear me out, the travelers who told me these rumors also tell a rather intriguing tale not directly related to Jackson. Y'see, last year, someone stopped by Jackson to get some horses to ride to Colorado and that someone was the brother of the one of the big shots in Jackson. But even better was that he was transportin' a teen-age girl with him. Not just any ordinary high school level brat, though. She was fucking I-M-M-U-N-E. And they were going to the west to find the Fireflies to create a cure and save the world. Bring everything back to the way things were. That's where my next vacation spot will be. Jackson, Wyoming or Colorado." The Taleteller leaned back, waiting for their reaction.

Laughter.

"You think that someone would actually be immune to a fucking runner bite? My god, just thinking about it…" Scott up front.

"No one ever has survived a fucking bite or inhalation. They either blow their brains out or succumb to infection within two days. No freaking exceptions to that rule. I've seen both. When I was in the military, the doctors were all rushing to find immunes or create vaccines. They all failed. Trust me, whoever told you immune teenage girls are now running around was just desperate. That girl, if she exists, by now has long lost her mind to the infection." The Drifter.

"But hey, the sound of a safe haven like Jackson County is so mighty appealing. Why don't we head to Wyoming?"

"It's a long road between here and Wyoming. Even with all the gas we scavenged, we'll probably run out by the time we cross the border. And who knows what we'll do or run into then? Too much risk going off on some wild goose chase for some imaginary holy grail."

"So you don't believe it, Layton, that things can really go back to the way they were?"

The Drifter thought about things he had seen in the past. In Denver, there had been the hundreds of kids that had died when the Fireflies bombed their military boarding school. There had been David's group, the people who had accepted the hopeless reality of their world as it was and had begun roasting infants on spits. There were the people that roamed the country, murdering for something as small as a shoe or a can of beans. Uprisings in the quarantine zones. Towns populated entirely by the infected, their heads bursting with fungal growth. Roads littered with emptied cars heading nowhere, many more than not with decaying corpses still inside. We all thought that the infected were the only threat when it first started, just seeing how many turned or were killed by them in the first week alone. But once we figured out how to outsmart them, they were trivial compared to what happened next. Once all form of order collapsed and we started running low on supplies.

He gave his answer.

"Never."


	4. The Drifter: Planning

**Some other things to read before reading**

**This chapter was originally intended to be longer, but I halved the content into two parts after suffering a combination of writer's block and procrastinated summer homework biting me in the ass at last.**

**Thanks to said summer homework, updates may be sporadic and uneven in release.**

**The storylines in Roads to Nowhere will vary in length. Some will be multiple chapters (such as the current one) while others will be one-shots (the subsequent Driver storyline). They may vary in tone due to the different perspectives for each character. Joel and Ellie plus some other characters from the game will eventually make physical appearances, but to respect Neil Druckmann's canon these appearances will likely be restricted to cameos. **

**The Drifter will continue for a few more chapters, and the storyline will ultimately be concluded from another perspective in a later storyline coming in 2023 estimated.**

**Story may eventually be jacked to a M-rating. **

* * *

Scott had driven slowly, meticulously so it had taken them a while to traverse the winding hills that had led them into Half-Moon Bay originally. You could never be too careful these days, especially on the drained veins and arteries that had once made up America's highway system. The skeletal remnants of the abandoned vehicles that often remained clogged in the long dead bloodstream were just one of the many tribulations that travelers faced. There were land-mines, road hazards intended for infected by the military that had kickstarted their usage and later the last-men-on-earth-type isolated survivors who had exploited them for their advantage. Then there were the actual traps, elaborate schemes planned out months in the making and pulled off flawlessly, claiming the lives of many an unwary survivor. These happened more frequently in the abandoned quarantine zones, but even so, there had been such cases the Drifter had experienced in the wastelands. So when the sky had blackened and the night clouds had rolled in, Scott had pulled off to the side of the road that appeared safe enough to spend a night. The RV camped next to a large body of water that was either a lake or an abandoned reservoir, its waves glistening like the fangs of a wolf as the half-obscured moon dashed its reflection upon the surface of the water.

And so they had camped for the night, taking turns on the watch for infected and stragglers with the trusty husky watch dog at their side. First Scott had done it, then Garrett then William. Melinda had taken the next turn, and Helena had followed when she left the spot vacant. It would've have been Cutter's turn next, but Cutter had died. So the Drifter took in his liberty to fill in Cutter's shift as well, just this once. It was sometime, perhaps an hour or two, past what would have been midnight in the old world, that the Drifter allowed himself to fall asleep, long after everyone else even the dog had.

* * *

Normally, with twenty years of surviving having chiseled him to a state of acceptance with his position in the new world order, his dreams were nothing. Abstract nonexistence, a mess of vague shapes and the sporadic drop of resonance that lingered in a moody, shadowy sky of steel nonbeing that had replaced the green trees and blue skies of the world that had once been. To him, these dreams meant nothing and he forgot most of the details when he woke. Someone had once told him that everything happened for a reason, but he thought that had been full of ha-ha bullshit.

But this night, his dream was lucid. Like the dreams that had tormented him in the early years, where he been part of the futile military push to restore America in the initial rise of the infected and the subsequent alone days where he had been forced to rely on every bit of his loathed training to remain alive. They often came to him when he had been at the weakest, situations such as food poisoning from eating the wrong can of beans or when the hostiles had held him captive in Colorado. These weren't the nightmares, no in this world the nightmares were almost your best friend. Nightmares reminded you that there could be worse things, and they pushed you to keep surviving. His nightmares had, at least. It was the good dreams, that had made him want to empty all his ammo until there was only one bullet left in its chamber, a bullet reserved for himself.

They were filled with jarring inconsistencies and illogical idiosyncrasies, the doors in his dream corridor leading into a surreal reverie of the subconscious mind. Perhaps the dreams and nightmares he had, all of them, represented the poles apart puzzle pieces that made up his fractured years of life. Puzzle pieces, that even when all had been collected, would never fit rightly with each other.

In this particular dream, he had wandered into a city. On a horse out of all the viable methods of transportation in the world, and he had not used horses for many years. The city was not Chicago, Denver, or any of the places that he had been. Yet there was an outwardly sentiment about this city, something that made him feel right at home even though he was by all means a stranger with no connection whatsoever. There was no military dragging civvies out of houses or heavily guarded checkpoints, no ruined buildings that crumbled at their foundations, no dead infected that had attached to whatever lay nearby to release a stream of posthumous spores. American flags ran proud with the wind flowing, none of the tattered scraps that hung in the quarantine zones and across the country. Invisible birds in blossoming trees chirped nearby, people holding foam cups of coffee walked around with their dogs, and couples made love voraciously in full view of the public.

Some of the people he knew were here.

A younger Hugh and adolescent Scott purchased hot dogs and lemonade from an overly enthusiastic street vendor that appeared so detached from the embittered street vendors he had known the Drifter was reminded that this was dreams he walked in. No sign of the grand-kids.

Cutter, with actual strands hair on his head, was arguing with someone unseen dreams way on a smartphone while a large Canon camera was slung around his neck. William was nearby, reading something that was perhaps a poem, to a disinterested blonde with stretched legs and remarkable tits. Melinda was next to the blonde, her arm brushing the blonde's shoulders. The blonde did not appear to mind Melinda's affection.

The dream was trying to fuck with him, the Drifter thought. This couldn't have been what his fellow survivors had been like in the world that had been before, he had not known any of these people and they had never discussed with him their pasts. This was what he had subconsciously designated for these people, roles in a world that had long moved on to the catacombs but still held one last hook in the Drifter.

He rode on the horse past them, further into the heart of the city. But things were melting away, like a Dali painting. The skyline around him disintegrated and melded itself into suburbs, his own horse morphing into a motorcycle in a bizarre conversion. Not the overseas Honda shit, American-made Harley Davidsons from the era of drug-afflicted Hells Angels before the bike brand had whored out their image. The suburbs were alive with the smells of BBQs and lawns being watered by hired Mexican gardeners. As the Drifter stepped off, he could hear a guitar playing somewhere in the distance, tunes that resembled the music that his father had listened to. The Rolling Stones, The Doors, and Pink Floyds of the dream world. But he saw no one playing a guitar as he scanned the area. Just rows upon rows of houses, cars, and fruit trees in the front yard.

He continued on, ignoring the invisible children playing with footballs and the ice cream trucks that played their jingles but stopped for no one. He caught sight of his reflection in a window as he passed by, and to little surprise he saw a reflection of the old Layton the one who had drowned for the sake of his survival long ago. Two healthy eyes that blinked on a fair and clean-washed face, the weathered weariness on a face littered with cuts that he had grown accustomed to absent. Clean-shaven, too. He blinked, and old Layton was gone. The Drifter was there in his place, the grim one-eyed reaper.

He knew what was going to come up next. His old house from the time when he had lived in the suburbs of Chicago, to the last detail up to the the roof tiling, and perhaps the family would be cooking up a BBQ in the backyard. His old brother Jordan would be doing the cooking, burgers and hot dogs that the Drifter had always found overcooked but had remained silent in his criticisms out of respect for Jordan. His father would be sitting nearby in jeans and a tank top smoking one of his cigarettes with a can of beer in his grasp. His kid sister Hannah, discovering the advent of her sexuality, would be absentmindedly doodling the names of boys and some girls in her notebook. His mother would be arguing with his aunt over the phone. And Jordan would wave to him, call him over and offer him a burger. No thanks, the Drifter would tell him. I ordered a pizza. And take the burger anyway. His dad would say, "Welcome home, Layton." And all would be fine with the world and he would be happy once more.

But he didn't stick around to experience it. He ran back, wanting nothing to do with that world and that life anymore. His parents were dead, Jordan and Hannah in all likelihood were dead as well. It was no use now, dwelling on his past in a world where sentimentality and nostalgia were just one of the many gaffes that could get a man killed.

And as he ran, the ground before him opened up its great big mouth to swallow him whole. He welcomed his descent into the nameless darkness that presented itself before him. Away from the world that had been his with the BBQs and his family and the good ol' American way of life. Towards the world that he had come to accept, the world that he would die in. A world populated by rapists, thieves, and cannibals.

And the Drifter fell off the edge of his world.

He woke up.

* * *

Just another piece of shit dream, he decided. It had been a long time since the last one...

* * *

He sat on a creaking fold-up chair that had been stored in the RV, propped next to the sleeping dog. He watched the sun rise over the stretches of wilderness and broken roads that surrounded them as he smoked another cigarette. He coughed at the unpleasantness of the smoke, causing the dog next to his feet to whine and twitch slightly.

At least the sunrise looked marvelous, a five-star eight-course banquet served by a team of international chefs for your eyes only. If painters and photographers still existed in this world, they would've had a hell of a time with what nature had done to this abandoned world.

He had his breakfast early, before anyone else had risen from their sleeping bags. He ate canned ravioli that in all likelihood was a decade past its expiration date cold directly out of the tin. Most of the canned goods that they scavenged for food was often past its expiration date with a 2/3 chance of giving the eater food poisoning. But in this world, people took more risks on this shit more than they had in the old world. Bad food was better than no food at all in his viewpoint, and the only people making fresh rations these days were the military. And the only way of getting your hands on those was contacting smugglers on the inside of the quarantine zone. The ghastly pasta in the can reminded him how much he missed crap like waffles and doughnuts for breakfast, and he grimaced at the memories.

He kept watch and read from one of the books they had found in Half-Moon Bay. It was a book with a picture of the old actor Will Smith and a dog on the cover, a cash-in reprint intended tie in with the book's big screen adaptation. They weren't making new movies these days, other than the military. But those movies weren't made for the purpose of entertainment like the ones he enjoyed in his heyday. Indoctrination was the only intent of film now. The book, about a lone man trying to survive in a world that was ended by vampires out of all things, seemed disturbingly similar to his trials in many ways and he had quickly closed the book. He had only gotten a few chapters in, and he had no intent to read the rest. He waited and watched the water on the lake's surface until the rest of the camp had woken up.

* * *

They spent a few last hours lazing away at the lake, a small amount of closing developments made before they departed down one of the forks in the road to an unknown tomorrow.

The Drifter and Scott sat inside the RV, looking at a faded map torn at the edges pocked with a multitude of deep white lined creases. It was a map of the state that had been California, all the roads, landmarks, and towns that had existed in pre-pandemic times. Scott had in his hands a flat can of Pacifica. The Drifter and Scott discussed which branch of the road to take the group.

"This road leads to San Francisco. There's guaranteed to be more fucking survivors along the way that we could trade with. And once we get close to the city we can establish trade ties with the smugglers on the inside. Maybe if we're lucky, we can get the whole lot of us into the zone. Living under martial law won't be nice, but it sure beats getting your throat ripped out by a clicker or getting your brains splattered by bandits. We got to play our cards close to the vest." The Drifter assumed that in Scott's mind, maybe the path to the chaotic quarantine zone had become a sort of yellow brick road for him.

"The other road will eventually take us to some towns called Cupertino and Sunnyvale. There's a chance that these towns could be completely deserted with a utopia of supplies for us to scavenge, perhaps we could find some place to fortify and settle down. But then again, there's also the risk of us driving right into another bandit stronghold or finding the entire town overflowing with infected."

"So what's the call?"

"Get our asses into the quarantine zone. You know that much very well and there's little you can do to change my mind on that."

"You can't be serious."

"How so? The quarantine zones can't be that bad."

"I was in the military before. I helped run one of the quarantine zones. And things went to hell pretty quickly, let me tell you. There were just as many people trying to get out as those poor saps trying to get in, and we were being ordered to shoot all of them on the spot. And before you know it, bam, civil unrest leads to full out revolt. So no shit, I don't think San Francisco is the right path."

"That was YOUR quarantine zone, genius. San Francisco isn't YOUR quarantine zone. Things have to be different there. How else could it still be under jurisdiction of military? It has to be better. San Francisco is the key to our secure future. Listen Layton, I know we ain't exactly the best of working partners, but just hear me out for once. When the outbreak first hit, me and my pop's hometown was skimped on when the big evacuations came. And we couldn't make it into Phoenix because we arrived right as they stopped letting people in. We've been running all around the west coast for years ever since, no home and no future."

"So, how'd you sire your offspring if you were just running around? They're undeniably too young for you to have had them before the outbreak."

The Drifter realized then that he had stepped onto the ice, unaware until now that it was damn close to cracking and letting him fall prey to the merciless chill of the waters below. Scott's expression darkened and his hand was reaching towards his pocket for something heavy and metal.

"I should kill you right now. For making me remember my fuck-ups like that. But fuck… as much as I want to… as much as I hate you for the piss-poor leader you are… you still have sort of worth to the group. Hardly anyone here is as proficient with guns and finding shit as you are."

"I'm sorry… I didn't know tha-"

"Get out of my sight."

* * *

He washed himself as best that he could in the cold waters, scrubbing his skin and using one of his personal blades to take off a few scraps of his growing facial hair. Until the pandemic, he never realized how much he had taken the luxuries of the old world for granted. The shaving cream, the shampoo, the conditioner… all of the crap that was damn near impossible to scrounge up intact now. As he emerged from the miniature waves lapping the shore, he absentmindedly wiped the leftovers of dirt and dust from beneath his nails.

He redressed himself with the clothes that he had washed prior to dipping himself into the water after deciding they had dried sufficiently. His shirt was still wet somewhat, and the fabric clung to him weighing the Drifter down. It annoyed him, but it was nothing too serious. He thought that he, if in the mood, would help himself to a meager lunch. Maybe one of the kids had caught some fish, he silently hoped to himself. He then realized something that could perhaps help him better discuss their plans once Scott had calmed down.

Helena had come out of San Francisco. She would have to know what the situation up there and around the region was like. She after all, had been ways off away from the City by the Bay when his group had first encountered her. So, it was just a matter of finding her and shooting her some quick questions. He hoped that she would class enough to cooperate with him. They had gotten along fine enough so far, but even he felt a certain enmity and callousness that resonated deep within her even on the rare occasions she was acting social and pleasant.

"Have you seen Helena anywhere?" He asked Melinda who was cutting strips off game that Garrett had brought in yesterday. The short brown lady shook her head.

"Well, if she does stop by here tell her that I have to speak with her about a few things." The Drifter accepted a somewhat-burnt strip of rabbit and walked away chewing on it.

William was sitting against the rusting wreckage of a car nearby the camp, he was disinterestedly thumbing through one of the dirty books that he carried in his personal bag. Garrett was with Jake, the two watching their improvised fishing bobs gently go up and down. Seems the fish these days . Either that or they were all dead.

"I hope you don't let the kids read that." The Drifter interrupted William's fragile trance. William quickly scrambled to his feet, hastily slammed the bookends of _Lusty Country for Old Men _together and proceeded to cram it into his backpack.

"Um, let the kids read what?" William put on his best poker face, which is to say not a very impressive one.

"Cut the crap, I know what's in your bag. Read through some of it when you were busy on night watch. Needless to say, rumors ain't the only thing you got terrible taste in."

"C'mon, man. The world's gone to shit. You say that all the time! What does it matter if some eleven-year old start banging each other? Kids were doing heaps of bullfuck as early as my sixth grade by the hour, I swear." He winked, as if to inject some humor into this sorry conversation.

"That's one of the things that still matters to me. So just keep that printed rubbish out of their sight. On second thought, keep them out of everyone's sight. I'm sure only you still appreciate that 'style' of writing." And that was the end of that tête-à-tête.

"Alright, so what do you really want?" William sighed as he tried subtly unzipping his backpack with his arms behind him.

"Have you seen Helena anywhere? There's something I need to talk to her about. The quarantine zone she came from." The Drifter explained.

"Christ, you think I pay attention to that ice queen? You should see some of the stares she gave me when I accidentally touched her ass. No shit, I have no fucking clue where she went."

"Well fuck, I don't suppose you fisher-boys know anything?" He called to Garrett, who looked like he was finding it progressively harder to uphold interest in watching the fishing bobber's alluring movement. Jake looked like he was ready to scamper off and the Drifter thought he heard the boy mutter "And I thought fishing was supposed to be fun."

"I overheard her telling Melinda that she was going to try and wash in the lake, before she nabbed her share of the rabbit. So, just look for some clothes discarded on the shore and I'm soon she'll be there soon enough. And just so we're clear, I mean nothing of that nature with the clothes comment. I by no resources am anything close to William's level."

"Huh… whatever you guys say." And The Drifter walked away, hoping that Scott wouldn't ditch them before he had some time to try and compromise a bit with the man. There would be plenty of talking to do in the next couple of minutes.


	5. The Drifter: Discussion

**As previously stated last chapter, updates will be sporadic due to other affairs of mine. Steam Summer Sale loot isn't going to play itself. Don't be surprised, to all five of you following this story, if the updates take weeks in between or are much shorter than what's been published so far. **

* * *

Her hair was still wet by the time the Drifter had found Helena. Some articles of clothing such as her jacket were scattered on the ground, but for the most part she was fully dressed. Not nude as the ones he had spoken to had implied somewhat, and for that he was glad. It had been a while since he had seen a living female nude, and he worried that it would give her the wrong impression if he had given into his instincts and stood agape at her feminine features. She was seated on a large, potholed hunk of a rock with her backpack stooped against its western side. She was looking down at her feet, which were bare and somewhat long for a girl. Socks were hanging on another nearby rock, evidently to dry. She was wiping dirt and other refuse from her boots when the Drifter made his presence known.

"Hello."

"Um, hi. I don't suppose you were sitting there watching me wash the whole time?" She stared at him, their eyes locked. He couldn't read her the way he sometimes assessed the others, for the Drifter she stood out as a bit of an enigma. Helena, regrettably he thought, was rather unpredictable. In the months that they had spent together in the group, he had noted various shifts in her personality and behavior. At times she would be withdrawn and the next day social. She was cooperative completely at the start, but now Helena was starting to become somewhat of a burden to keep around. The Drifter understood to an extent when the majority of the others distrusted her and the risks her bipolar behavior posed, but it pained him to admit that he did develop a small soft spot for her. Helena reminded him of someone he had known and cared for once, not in a romantic sense, but in a familial sort of quality.

"No, I'm not Will. But my rare truth be told, I was looking for you. I've been having a bit of friction with our mutual pal Papa Scottyboy…"

"So, you need my help to convince Scott to completely abandon whatever support he would've given your plan of the day? I'm sure that is what he'll do given his mutual 'friendship' with the two of us. If this is some half-cocked scheme to further deteriorate our already fragile work relationships, of course I'd be willing to help. Runs in the family, I guess, generating chaos."

"Nothing of that sort. Everything is just fine. I just needed to know a few things about… San Francisco."

"And what makes you think I want to talk about that chapter of my life? If I wanted to talk about my time in the fucking zone, I wouldn't be here talking to you right now. I'd still be in San Francisco, bartering for ration cards and hoping that my district wasn't the one picked by Fireflies for their daily bombing. Why the sudden interest in the QZs, too?" The Drifter felt as if she was zooming in on him, her eyes growing accusatory and inquiring. He supposed his current feeling was what those who had tried to desert out of conscientious objection in the earliest days of the Pandemic felt like in the weeks leading up to their trials and executions.

"Scott wants to try and smuggle the whole lot of us in the San Francisco."

"Aw, why the fuck would he want to do that? Hasn't he heard what the military does to people they catch trying to get themselves past all that brick and wire?" Her face was bleak, somewhat puzzled at this revelation. She waited for him to respond, keeping her eyes locked with his as she tied her into a ponytail.

"I've been on both sides of the walls in multiple zones long enough to see just how differently each side sees the Quarantine Zones. You probably saw it as dead-end oppression, is what why you busted out? An uncertain future, but a future nonetheless?" She nodded as he said that.

"Never knew exactly what to think of people like you. I would've stayed in the Zone I was stationed at if I knew we'd never be able to restore things to the way they were, but I was younger back then. Before I learned to live with who I was becoming." This had piqued her curiosity slightly, and he quickly added. "Those memories aren't for you, Scott, or anyone else in this damn roadshow. I alone live with them, they are a burden that only I need bear in a world when memories can get you killed."

"So since storytime's over, what about those outside the zones? They can't be really desperate enough…"

"In the chaos that followed Day One, everyone was trying to get into the Zones. The Zones were the last semblance of safety and government that we had… the people thought that when you got into the zones, you were safe at last. Out of the frying pan. The government would take care of them, we all thought that, until the time came to leave the zones and rebuild. Everyone outside of the zone was on their own, and in those days no one wanted to face the thought of being trapped on the outside with the infected. Not the bandits, no those people would came later. Back in the early days, we still thought that we could trust our fellow man."

"You still haven't answered my question."

"I was getting to that part, don't they teach patience in military QZ school? Anyways, the higher-ups realized quickly that with the rate people were flowing into the zones, we wouldn't be able to efficiently protect them all. A million or so, fine. But we had limited space, communication, and resources. We decided to scare the remaining stragglers off, to dissuade people from seeking the zones after the remnants of Congress announced Closing Day. I'm sure you've seen all the cars riddled full of holes on the roads into cities. That was us. That was me. But even so, the myth of the Quarantine Zone has never faded for the outsiders. Many still want in, and they'll be willing to work with cutthroats and brave the bombed out ruins to do so. Poor bastards…"

"So what do you want me to tell you? There's much I could say…"

"What's zone like on the inside, outside, shit like that."He shrugged. In the back of his mind, he had convinced himself that no matter what evidence he could scrounge up, the driver in the RV could not be swayed.

"Inside, I'm sure it's the typical case for any quarantine zone that hasn't been abandoned to overgrowth or overtaken by disgruntled inhabitants. Military is mean to people, yellowjackets decide that the military is being too mean and they in return start blowing up anything mildly significant to the MP and launching hit and runs on checkpoints. Neutrals get caught in the middle. Military gets a tiny bit paranoid especially when unaffiliated citizens join in the revolt. They start dragging out random citizens; some of them not even real yellowjackets, and shooting them in public. They shot my father for trying to poison rations, but like you say, that's a story you don't get to hear. Military's executions just give the yellowjackets more fuel to burn their fire with. And on top of that, there's still the risk of infection. Every day you see more people being dragged out of their blocks, being scanned. More military in full-body armor and gas masks equipped with flamethrowers entering run down buildings. But on top of that, everything's just swell."

"Why'd you leave?" As if he really needed to ask her that.

"Just cause. I personally got sick of the daily fighting and the monotony and paranoia that set in once stuff wasn't being blown up or shot. And besides, my mother always acted like she resented me. With Dad gone, well, I wasn't sharing any room with her for long. I wasn't going to stay and join the yellowjackets, that was his fight not mine. And I wasn't the only one who wanted out… we all eventually found each other. We all had enough connections to get ourselves supplied and make a path out of San Francisco. There was already a well-established tunnel and rooftop system, and smugglers would get you anything provided you could get them what they want. But getting prepared was the easy part… none of us were really prepared for what lay outside."

"Bombed out city exterior crawling with infected and military patrols?" She nodded at this.

"It was a large group at first. We worked together fine getting out, but once we were out things started to crack. Squabbles, desertions, killings in your sleep, etc. We started with fifteen. What the soldiers didn't shoot, what the spores didn't infect, what the infected didn't kill, we destroyed until there were only four of us left. The last of us, our brief alliance, went our separate paths after that. I just wandered, doing what I could to see tomorrow, until I ran into you guys."

"And are you happy with where you are now?"

"Who knows? I came fairly close to deserting or smothering some of those shitstains in their sleep. I might just try it with you kind folks." She told him coldheartedly.

"Well, I have what I want. I guess. See you at dinner?" He was never good at ending conversations.

"If there's a dinner to see you at."

"I know."


	6. The Drifter: The Division Bell

The end of the day was uneventful, save for a brief encounter at around three thirty noontime with a pack of five wandering infected that were either some very bloodthirsty runners or very lethargic stalkers. Regardless of what stage of infection their would-be attackers were at, the assembly that had set up camp at what had once been the Upper Crystal Springs Reservoir performed admirably enough to prevent any fatal casualties. It was a curious show of behavior for the infected, the Drifter later though, to see the infected just roaming about like a nomadic pack of bison. They usually stayed resigned to one spot, close to their source of infection. They had moved yes, but never to the extent he had witnessed with the wandering fungus heads. Was it a sign that they were actually evolving, that the Cordyceps was becoming smarter somehow? Twenty years had passed since the day all hell broke loose and America died after all. It was another what-if in a list of what-ifs that bode no warm feelings for the future to come.

When the lookout, a Will who at the moment who appeared to be intoxicated in spite of there being no drinking alcohol in the group's collective inventory, squealed upon spotting the first lurching infected the Drifter who was half-mindedly thumbing his fingers through the yellowing pages of a _Batman and Spider-Man _crossover comic quickly snapped out of his four-color panel stupor and sprung into gunslinging action. The first step had been herding the children into the RV, a temporary shelter. If Garrett or Helena or one of the others had been on lookout, perhaps the infected pack could've been picked off quickly from a distance with a rifle. But Will, when he did pick up a gun, always had trouble shooting straight. Especially with a two-handed rifle. The recoil, combined with his own shaky sway, resulted in his bullet flying straight past the fungus that had enveloped one of the infected's eyes. So it fell down to the Drifter and the rest of the ground crew to keep the fungus heads at bay.

"Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck" a stream was shooting from Will's whisker-tinted lips like a machine gun as he fell back wildly firing blindly backwards trying to pick off the frenzied fiends. A lucky bullet caught one of the running infected square in the left corner of their lesion-pocked head, ripping off a good chunk of meat. But the fiend staggered onwards, lurching onto Will with a leap. Had it not been for the timely intervention of a good .45 bullet, a decaying set of canines would've torn out the taleteller's lungs immediately. Screaming, one of the other infected tried to scratch at the Drifter. Intercepting its mad blows, he wrestled out of its grasp and was about to put another .45 to good use just as an arrow thudded itself into the infected's back.

Before he could congratulate Garrett for his shooting, he heard Helena yell at him to watch his back. Wheeling around, he was right in time to see frothing lips curled up in a snarl and eyes mutilated with reddened cracks as he was knocked to the ground magnum knocked from his grasp. Howling incoherently, his assailant was pounding its leathery fists against his chests. A few more blows, and he was sure to lose a few ribs. He couldn't reach the machete he kept by his side, not without compromising his own defense.

"Don't worry, Layton. I got this fucker right in my line of fire." Scott.

The shotgun blast was the next thing he heard. The infected, snarling to the end, made no sound as the shell sheared its head off. A congealed spray of blood made little red spots like strawberry syrup on the Drifter's coarse features.

"Thanks for the save." Something told him this wouldn't be the start of Gibson-Glover relationship, but they could work together the Drifter knew as he congratulated Scott who was loading another shell into the shotgun.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Now, do me a favor and save us all some ammo, will you?" Scott pointed at the last runner, who had been disabled by an arrow that was poking out of its kneecap like a kitchen knife cutting through cake. Still, it crawled towards them hoping to pluck some flesh from their bodies. The Drifter shook his head as he witnessed the sad sight. He drew out his machete and walked towards the crippled infected. The runner as it saw him went into conniptions and rambled in guttural sounds that were almost English. Clawing wildly, its crooked hands were swiped aside by the boots of the Drifter. Crushing an arm with his heel, he readied his arc, aiming at the neck.

On cue, a wild bird squawked and flew into the horizon leaving behind ripples in the water as it flapped its wings and launched itself into the sky.

* * *

The Drifter watched the bodies of the infected pack burn as their ashes made a crescendo to the skyline rim of the setting sun. He decided to skip dinner for today, he was in no mood to fill his stomach even though he knew that he should've. Will had gone into hysterics in the aftermath, he had convinced himself that he had been bitten and that he was going to become one of them. The bewildered bastard had tried to put a gun in his mouth and blow his lid off, and when they had taken everything sharp or with a trigger from him he kept trying to convince them to do the deed for him. It had taken multiple slaps from Helena to convince him that the scrape on his ankle was just a scrape. The Drifter wondered if it was right to keep Will along. Sure, he made for decent entertainment in a world without the Late Night Show or Nintendo with all his rumor and stories and shit but he did relatively little compared to the rest when it came to pulling his own weight. The Drifter, in his confidential opinion, thought it was Will that Scott should've been keeping the blacklist tabs on.

Speaking of Scott, might as well finally have that goddamned San Francisco or bust talk with him. Maybe he could finally convince the driver of their vehicle to change his mind about trying to smuggle the group into a quarantine zone swarming with military and Firefly conflict.

And maybe the Cubs would finally walk away with a World Championship. Ha!

Jake was in the RV, the kids idly scribbling lines and swirls in the dirt with sticks. Hugh cooked, giving a silent greeting to the Drifter. The Drifter nodded his head and briefly smiled in acknowledgment. Truth be told, he enjoyed having all these people even Jake and Will around him despite his better solitary nature which had kept him alive all these years. Jake was returning a can of food to the shelves when the Drifter rapped on the doorframe to get his attention.

"….alright, that's seven total cans of lima bean – huh? Oh, what do you want now?"

"I wanted to talk about your master plan… you know, the one regarding San Francisco."

"For love of God, not this shit again. Listen to me, fucker, just because I saved your one-eyed ass today does not mean my fucking van is suddenly the goddamned UN Council. My plans are not up for RE-INTEPRETATION. Do you get that?"

"Listen… I've been talking with the rest of the group about your plan. Not all of them, just those who have been in and out of San Fran post-pandemic. They tell me some pretty dicey tales regarding the city by the bay, the usual shit. Bombed out ruins crawling with fresh infected, military shooting anyone on sight, social anarchy in the streets… just the works."

"And why the fuck would that crap you bring up matter? So, just because we might get a couple of boo-boos on the way there we should turn around and run off on your abortive trek across the Pacific wasteland?"

"I'm just telling you this one thing. Consider your kids."

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean? They have a greater chance of dying the longer we stick with your plans, whatever the fuck those are."

"Just consider… what use will it be to reach San Francisco only to have your kids blown up in a Firefly bombing? Or what if the military butts in and ships them off to one of their schools of indoctrination? What if they get infected and you can't bring yourself to pull the trigger?" This prompted a murderous look from Scott. The Drifter, undeterred, continued.

"Or what if both you and your old man get offed on the way, leaving your poor little children to fend for themselves in a world where the Good Samaritan has become more than just a dying breed. So, I'm just begging you to sit down, have a nice cool drink, and reconsider."

"Fine then… I'll reconsider."

"Well, this has definitely gone better than I expected. Say… one more thing."

"What?"

"Why were you counting the lima beans?"

"Is your skull too damn thick to process even the glaring survival basics? I'm keeping inventory. To better manage, you know."

"I understand. That was a fault on my part."

"Hmm. See you in the morning, I guess."

"G'night, I suppose."

* * *

Hugh cropped into his sleeping bag near the embers of the fireplace, outside the RV. He shared the outside with his son, his grandchildren sleeping inside the RV. The children were the only ones who were allowed inside the RV for the nights, everyone else was inside tents or outside sleeping bags.

Twenty years ago, it was family that motivated him to survive and it was what still kept his wheels oiled and turning. In some respects, he still saw his man Scott as the young boy who he had carried to safety pass a burning barricade of police cars and needed his guidance in the new world disorder that would develop. And the grandkids, God be damned even in this hellish world kids were still being born, the extended bloodline helped. Only was a shameful pity neither Scott's mother nor his lover was still here. The woman whom he had bedded was blown to bits by a nutjob's wire trap and his son's lady bled too much giving birth. Honestly, he thought to himself, he didn't know whether it was right to praise the Maker for his fortunes or to damn Him for everything that had gone wrong. Much of which had.

And right now, he felt like cursing God for not shutting up the damn thing that was nudging him so voraciously right now not letting an old man get some fucking rest.

"Damnit pop, wake up already."

Hugh blinked open one eyelid, to see his son readying for another push. It was still dark outside, a flickering flashlight and the stars were the only illumination for vast expanses of land around. He groaned, opened his mouth to speak.

"Scott, what time is it boy?"

"Listen, I know it sounds clichéd but I think it's exactly midnight right now. It's the perfect timing, everyone else is fast asleep in dreamland."

"Then Scott, let your old man join them." Hugh tried to turn over, but Scott vigorously reached for his father by the armpits and forced him up.

"Listen pop, you need to understand. There is no time for you to catch your sleep here. We're leaving."

"Wha-"

"Don't speak that loudly. I can't risk anyone else waking up." Scott scolded as he rolled up his bag and unlocked the door to the RV.

"Are you really… really leaving everyone else behind? You can't be serious about this." Hugh said as the shock jolted him fully awake.

"Look… I actually am. Listen, don't give me that look, pop. This isn't something that was easy for me to do despite what I see in your eyes. But I'm doing what's best for us. Our family. I've already lost Mom, my sweetheart, and I don't what to have to bury more of my kin. And I'm going to keep the rest of us safe, no matter who else I have to step over to do so. The longer I stay with Layton and the rest, the longer I worry that he might actually change my plans." Scott said sternly as he turned on the ignition.

"At least leave them some supplies behind. I'll ride along with you just this once, but we are not sending these people to their graves right of the box."

"I already took care of that. Why do you think I made an inventory earlier? It pains to admit that I do have a grudging respect for the one-eyed bastard."

Scott sighed as he felt something heavy wash over him. He ignored the feeling, keeping his eyes on the obscured road as the RV drove off into the star-blanketed night.

* * *

The Drifter blinked his one eye as he came back to the realm of the waking world. He had no dreams that night, just the usual abstract sea of floating shapes that he supposed had a deeper meaning. He shared a tent with Helena and Garrett, their living space so cramped their sleeping bags were brushed together tight. The two had already been awake, so he assumed that he overslept a small bit. The two were bundled up in the tent corner with their clothes crumpled, hair disheveled, and feet bare. The two looked to be wrestling, their arms and legs locked. He asked them if that was the ruckus that woke him up, and the two shiftily glanced over in their response as the two slipped off of each other. He noticed for the first time how close in age the two looked, beneath the scarring that the world's conditions had left on their bodies. It was bound to happen eventually, he realized.

"We were just... exchanging combat survival techniques 'firsthand'."

"Right... well, at least you both still got your clothes on. You two actually have a thing for each other?" He was getting some uncomfortable flashbacks to the time he had brought Cindy Johnson Guthrie back to his house in sophomore year to work on a chemistry project and his mother had gone into conniptions when the two brushed fingers by accident.

"Um, we both woke up early this morning. Had trouble falling asleep so we just started talking about shit. Our parents, quarantine zones, the Fireflies, stuff like that. One thing led to another and..."

"Yeah, I know the drill. I had hormones and parents too." Damn kids, he thought to himself. Well, as long as they didn't actually do the damn deed without condoms lying around or as long as they didn't let whatever damn feelings (if they actually existed) compromise the group or individual survival, he'd let them be. "Say, you kids have breakfast yet?"

"Not really. Neither of us have gone outside yet. We were... keeping warm for the whole time." Helena coldly elbowed Garrett when he said that.

"Well... if my mood improves by the time I finish mine, I might bring you some so you stay put here and continue 'keeping warm.'" He mumbled as he stumbled out of his sleeping bag with a yawn. Limping out of the tent, he first thought if there was even enough supplies left to justify breakfast. Then he thought why were there was bunch of canned food, bandage wrap, and other supplies they had gathered lying near the fireplace with a handwritten note when they should've been kept secure in the RV. Then he wondered where the RV went.

He took the note and skimmed it over.

It fully dawned on him.

"That son of a bitch."

He nearly tore the letter to shreds before simply slamming it onto the ground and stomping it several times. The others would probably want to hear it, when they got out. He staggered to the lakeside, and for a full ten minutes threw rocks that had loud splashes long long distances in a clouded haze.

What to do now?

* * *

**I had to get one at least more chapter out before schooling resumed, after that, who knows how long it will take in-between chapters? Anyways, I hope that enough of you reading this actually enjoyed it. I'd appreciate it if more of you would leave your comments or suggestions in the reviews section.  
**

**Most of this was written in a boring traffic-crammed burning SoCal climate seven-hour car ride from Long Beach to Sunnyvale where I didn't have access to the earlier chapters for reference, so I apologize if this is not up to par in terms of writing, content, or continuity.**


	7. The Drifter: On the Road

He had woken up everyone and forced them outside. When everyone, including the dog, had gathered in a malformed circle, he read aloud to them what Scott had written on his note.

"I'm sorry. But no matter how many times I can write this, there's no doubt none of you particularly want to offer your forgiveness to me right now. And you know what? Fuck that. I need none of it. All I need to keep my peace of mind are my children. Jake and Maria: they are the last thing that I still can cling onto in this dying world, to keep my candle burning even though it should've flickered out long ago. I don't care if you don't understand why I did what I did, because in my mind I know that I did what was right for me, right for Jake and Maria, and even right for you bastards. I could see the division bell ringing from a mile away, and it was only a matter of time before it bubbled to the surface and tore our group to pieces. Perhaps, with my family gone, you can mesh together for a little longer. It pains me, to leave you stranded on your own, but I have to do what is best for my children. Your blood for theirs, as a teacher once told me.

I'm leaving you enough to hopefully sustain you five and the dog for a week or two at most. After that, you're at your own means for good.

Sincerely

Scott Simms"

He then tore the letter to shreds and scattered the remains in the lake. Like water striders, they floated away on the smoothly rolling surface. The Drifter looked back at the rest of the group. Will was rubbing the lens of his dirt-lined glasses, cleaning to no avail. He looked nervous, as if he was ready to go tear out all his hair and gouge out his own eyes. Melinda had a shocked look on her face, her arms crossed and eyes downcast. Garrett was shaking his head, he hadn't been the most trusting of Scott but he likely hadn't suspected their fellow survivor of turning on the group like that. Helena was seated next to him, albeit a noticeable distance apart. She seemed discomforted more by his nearby presence the news being dealt.

"So, what are we going to do now?" Will finally asked, breaking the agonizing silence that like heated needles prodding into bare flesh hung over them.

"What we've always done. We adapt and move on."

* * *

With no set of wheels left, they split the leftover supplies amongst their bags stuffing in whatever they could carry without becoming over-encumbered. Scott had left just enough to perhaps a third of their bags, the Drifter doubted that these beans and soups could last them for even a week. No matter what he had written in his note, he had no doubt kept most of the goods for his own blood. That, to his hesitant admission, was understandable. Had any of his blood been with him, he might've done the same the Drifter thought. But they weren't, they hadn't been anything but buried or missing for well over a decade now.

He sat on a fallen long and looked over the water of the Upper Crystal Springs reservoir. As he saw his own reflection mixed in with the bottom surface of the water, he remarked to himself how clear and innocent the water was. How it contrasted with the reflection of a face missing an eye riddled with numerous scars and cracked lips, a relic from an anachronistic era reduced to dust recycled through degeneration, desperation, and disillusionment into a molded veteran of modern times. His dog barked and padded up next to him, sitting down at his shoes. He never named the dog, a fine-bred husky, he realized. It was always Dog to him. There was always something else on his mind that he brushed it off. Might as well do the damn deed now, because this is the start of a long drive with nothing to think about.

"What sort of name suits a dog like you… you're loyal, efficient, big… how about Connor? Takes care of the gender gap too if you happen to be a bitch." The dog barked what sounded like approval. He stroked it under its muzzle, as the dog nestled next to his legs.

"We keeping the dog with us? I mean, man's best friend and all, but what if he starts becoming a burden to keep around?"

Helena had snuck up on him. Her jacket was unzipped, the sleeves rolled up. She had a fairly impatient look on her face. At this, Connor's grey coat bristled as it showed its teeth. Connor's tail had been tucked under its body, the blue eyes of the dog seemed to be stuck between fright and anger.

"Don't worry, Connor. Don't listen to the scary bitch, I'm not letting you loose anytime now." He stroked the dog again, which appeared to calm it down marginally.

"You named the dog Connor?"

"Yes. What's the matter with that?"

"Let's just say I don't really like that name…"

"Too bad for you then, the dog seems to approve. His name's final, just as his place alongside our caravan in our coming travels is. There ain't going to be a lot of abandoned places filled with consumables in the coming miles, and if we're going to have to hunt, well then you'll see how handy Connor is."

"Fine then."

She strode away. _At least we'll have a real nice alternative if we run out of supplies and can't catch a rat to save our live. _She thought silently to herself.

* * *

Backpacks strapped, Connor by their side, the group tore down the last remnants of their camp and they continued up the ascending road. Looking at the vine enveloped highway sign, they could make out well enough that San Francisco was north of their direction and going down south they would eventually reach San Jose. No matter which way they took, it would be an ever shifting series of up- and downwards climbs as they were in a hilly region. The Drifter gave Scott's words about San Francisco one last playthrough in his head. Perhaps… but then he shook that thought out of his mind. No… quarantine zones would bring back unwanted memories above all the other reasons why not. Scott had mentioned a Sunnyvale and Cupertino down his detested path. Perhaps there would be something there or along the way.

South it was then. The drifters embarked on the first step of their new journey down this new road.

Garrett had run ahead of them, checking out all the discarded husks that had once been automobiles ahead of them. The Drifter, observing them, shook his head in pity. Garrett was the youngest male in the group, he had been born into this world and had no real experience with the era that had come before, yet the Drifter felt that Garrett of them all had the greatest futile sense of hope for the future. Garrett, red in the face and puffing, skidded to a stop in front of the Drifter. The Drifter looked down at Garrett, who had a slightly embarrassed sheepish expression in his glowing face and was trying to avoid the stares of his other compatriots especially Helena.

"Don't expect find any working vehicles for a long shot, Garrett. We got lucky when we ran into Hugh and the RV, but shit, not like that matters much now. We'll be stuck on foot for a good portion for the rest of our trip, I reckon. Maybe we'll strike the lucky seven when we reach the ruins of the old towns, but I don't wager we'll get much luck on the road."

"People just up and abandoned their only means of transport like that? Surely they couldn't have been that desperate, right, knowing all the dangers? These roads don't even look that crowded, not one bit like the ones near the quarantine zones."

"Sometimes, the mind stops acting rational and the person changes as a result. Perhaps some people were just ready to lay down and die, perhaps the others were taken out of their cars by force. I've seen a lot of sort of shit in my wanderings…"

"Do you keep track of every single one?"

"I try not to."

"There's just something depressing about those cars, abandoned like that. Broken down with no one to repair them. All the ones I checked had some shit that would ensure we couldn't use them. Missing doors, rotten wheels, and cannibalized engines. All of them rusted to a hunk of crap."

"Two decades of negligence in the face of weather like rainstorms and other factors random survivors made it inevitable."

"Do you think anything good is bound to happen on this road? Not RV-level good, but still something better than all the crap that's happened to us so far: losing Cutter to the bandits in Half-Moon, Scott and his family abandoning us, you know?"

The Drifter lied.

* * *

It was the last days of May, where in its dying throes Spring was reduced to nothing more than an empty door frame lined with specks of dust at the rim of a decrepit castle that was lowering the bridge to its murky pestilence-riddled moat to welcome the new host Summer. But still Spring lingered on in its own ways; as a dusty picture frame, nothing more than a relic of historical curiosity, a graying memory. And it seemed like the showers that were associated with April had instead this year booked reservations for the last days of May.

They briefly abandoned the road to take shelter from the downpour. It was true that the drifters could've carried on down their path but risking pneumonia with the limited supplies that they had was not a chance any of them were willing to take.

It was a long wait, so they set about themselves in chatter once more. The younger survivors drifted away to the side. One tried to bring up what had happened regarding themselves back at the earlier camp but was quickly shushed down. The other claimed that they weren't quite ready yet to discuss that matter, that in all likelihood it was just a one-time occurrence, that there were more important issues on their mind than the kinks of sex and love. The adults, ones that had been alive before the CDP pandemic, leaned up against a rusted pick-up truck that had lost three of its wheels and was teetering over on one edge. They discussed things, things before the pandemic and things from the world that had evolved in its wake.

"Have you ever seen one of them? You know… the Fireflies." Will was asking. Often in their downtime Will talked more and more about the Fireflies.

"Other than the dead ones and the graffiti sprayed everywhere? I can't say I have." Melinda told him.

"What about you, Layton? You were in the military at the start, weren't you?"

"Not my unit. But after my desertion…" That was all he felt compelled to say.

"What was it like? Meeting the only people on this damn globe willing to take a stand against the military oppression that's consumed civilization and the anarchy that's destroyed everything that's ever been built? Is it really true that they're close to finding a damn cure or vaccine for the CDP?"

"You talk as if they're the second coming of Christ. The only thing I will tell you is that everything they talk about on their broadcasts and graffiti – the restoration of democracy, bringing order to the roads, and fixing that whole mess with the cordyceps: it's all just talk. At the end of the day, they're just humans with delusions of grand heroism. They're no better than the military or a survivalist; it just happens they coat their words with sugar instead of expired vinegar."

"But with a real cure or vaccine, just think of what the Fireflies could accomplish for the people."

"You think that if they have a cure or vaccine, pretending that such a fantasy exists, that the Fireflies would just up and give it to everyone they could? What about the military and survivalists? Would the Fireflies just hand over a shot of anti-CDP to the people that hunted them or the people they've hunted? They would just use it as leverage for get others to join their hopeless cause. The world we knew can't be rebuilt; we've gone too far for that to ever happen. We just have to make best of the hand we've been dealt."

* * *

"We'll be eating steaks tonight."

The Drifter commented as he looked past the broken down fence of wire that bordered the highway cracked open with growing weeds. Past the hilly pastures of overgrown faded green grass he could see the husk of an old enclosure. Between the corral and the edge of the highway was a herd of bovines. It would be a waste, to kill all the cattle at once for they could never carry all that much at once, but one or two would produce enough meat to last their supplies for a while. And perhaps there would be further things of use in the barn.

"Cows. I can't believe it. Fucking cows. It's been years since I've seen one of these." Amazing how something once as common as cattle could surprise you these days.

"You think they're wild?" Garrett asked. He and Helena held their bows at ready. "I mean, there can't be anyone around to have taken care of them for the past twenty years."

"In all likelihood, yes. But does it matter whether cattle have gone feral retard or if they still a domestic retard? Good meat, good eat."

Two arrows zipped through the air, their twin arcs blazing towards the bovines with a rapid bloodthirsty intent. The arrows struck a brown colored white headed bull. It bellowed in surprise as the tips thudded into its neck. Frenzied it ran amuck in a circular arc as the rest of the herd scattered around it. Blood poring from where the arrows had hit it, the bull charged back towards the falling fence that surrounded the ramshackle barn behind it. Snagging itself in the dangled mess of wire, the bull finally gave out and died.

"Well… not exactly the way I planned it. Retrieval may be a pain but at least we'll eat good tonight."

"Provided we can find something to cook the damn thing with."

* * *

Something was wrong, the Drifter noted as he turned away from Helena who was using her personal knife to cut the wire to free the bull carcass. There was a ruined barn, sure. Broken windows, front door hanging by a hinge, the barnhouse a victim of a fire, animals running free, there were all the tropes present. But parked nearby was a gray Prius, an ugly Japanese car he thought, that was out of place. Sure, the car wasn't in top-notch showcase condition, but it looked too damn recent in a relative sense to have been a vehicle that had rotted away at this barn for two decades. The paint was chipping everywhere, one of the rear windows had been mangled by a bullet, and the back window was cracked as if many had beaten on it with lead pipes but other than those damages it seemed fine.

He checked the fuel tank. Near empty. Probably wouldn't even last a damn hour. No sign of the keys anywhere. And here he had been hoping that this soon after losing the RV that they would have a new ride to carry them all the way to Sunnyvale or Santa Cruz or wherever the hell he planned to head. Maybe LA… but he shook all thought of that city from his head.

Connor was barking. At the hanging door that led into the farmhouse. Creeping to the rim of the chipped wood step of the entrance, he flicked on his flashlight.

Spores. All the merrier. He could see illuminated in the darkness of the door a stairwell enveloped by a bulging mass of human-like flesh. From flesh waved tentacle-like growths. From fresh drifted faint spores, like killer flecks of snow. In the middle of the growth he could make out the burst remains of an exoskeleton, of a head ripped apart by fungal growth, a bloater that had one day died and attached itself to the stairwell in the hopes of infecting more into beings like it.

"Don't follow me." He warned the rest of the group.

He put on his gas mask and stepped inside, shining the flashlight. He heard sounds coming from his right and he shone the light there. He pulled out his magnum, ready if a monster came out of the darkness to strip his flesh from his body while he still drew breath. Underneath an overturned book case, pinned by its legs with no hopes of escape, was a writhing abomination that had once been a man. Nearby, on a table that had been knocked off, two bodies were slumped over. The bodies were in early stages of decay, bullet holes lodged into the sides of their heads where they lay. To the Drifter's alarm, one of the bodies seemed to be that of a small boy. Killing children were still one of the things that proved hard for him to do, even as a hardened veteran. He walked over to the overturned table. On it was dried blood that had trailed and having slid off of it was a fat journal and a 9MM handgun.

Using his flashlight, he flipped through towards the very end of the writing.

**Journal Entry #104**

_Passed through Cupertino today. A group of survivalists have set up residence there along Homestead Road going from the High School all the way towards the Springwood Apartments, don't know if it's a permanent one or temporary. The tents and residences set up in the abandoned buildings seem to indicate the former. The residents weren't the friendliest bunch I've ever met, but at least they didn't shoot first like the couple I killed in Gilroy. They asked us a bunch of questions like where we were headed, if we were part of any faction, if we planned on staying, and so far. _

_Thought they were going to start shooting us granted by the increasing suspicion on their faces, but then a large guy about 6'4 in height showed up. He seemed to be the big dude in charge, he noticed Isaac who was hiding behind me and Steffy. He told his boys and girls to put their guns at ease, he then asked if we needed anything. I said no, we had all we needed for the moment being. Big Man promised that as long as we didn't shoot and steal from his group, we could pass through safely. He said that they were expecting visitors some day, as his lookouts kept seeing green-jacketed fellows who seemed to be scouts dangerously near their perimeter. _

**Journal Entry #105**

_God-fucking-damn-it-all. I thought that the gasoline we picked up in San Jose would last the Prius until we reached Redwood City but it doesn't seem to be in my favor today. The car's been grasping at straws in terms of fuel ever since Gilroy but I was so sure that the gas could at least sustain us until Redwood City. Now we run the risk of becoming stranded here on this road with nothing but hills and forests and farms around us. We don't have enough room in our bags to carry all our vital supplies with us and I doubt we can scavenge the cars around us for fuel. Big fat fucking chance. _

_I guess I'll stop writing now. It got real dark a while back and I'm just wasting the batteries in the flashlights the longer I keep 'em on so I can scribble down this shit. _

_Fuck. Why didn't I check the battery inventory before leaving Cupertino? I could've traded for a fresh pair of AAs, god fucking damn it all._

**Journal Entry #106**

_To my precious Steffy, I'm so very sorry. To my boy, who came late to us and deserved better than the world you knew, my Isaac, I'm so very sorry. But no matter how many times I write I'm so very sorry, I can never forgive myself for what I just did to both of you. No one can. I didn't see the spores before it was too late. It was all my fault. My entire fault. I should've checked but my flashlight had gone out. I didn't see it until I bumped into the dead fat shelled infected and realized what I had just done. We all breathed in the spores, it was too late for us all. But not too late to alleviate your suffering._

_I did the only thing I could, so neither of you would turn into one of those things. But as justice would have it, there were only two bullets for the three of us. My punishment for killing both of you. Both of you went out bravely, and I hope that wherever you two are now that it's safe. No infected or bandits to threaten you ever again. I don't expect either of you to forgive me, and I don't want you to because I can't forgive myself f_

The rest of this entry was blurred out to the point of incomprehension by what seemed like tear blots.

**Journal Entry #107**

_It's been two hours so far since the last entry. How long does it take to turn? Neither of them were displaying symptoms by the time I shot them. Is it a day, at max? The gun is empty, and I haven't found anything else in the farm to do it with. The saddest part is? There was enough gasoline in the garage, in all likelihood enough to carry us to Redwood City. What a fucking joke. If I hadn't been such an idiot, if I had just been more careful, Steffy and Isaac _the rest of the paragraph was scribbled off into an incoherent mess of squibbles and lines.

_My hand is shaking. I might as well keep writing in this journal about anything I can think of. The car key, I should've thrown those fucking things away after I found the gas, are still in my back pocket where I've always kept them. Maybe if I can bring myself to do it, maybe I can cut out my own throat with them. _

_But I'm scared. _

**Jonee Enter /1 oh ate**

_I fell asleep on the table overnight. I dreamed about Steffy and Isaac. They looked like clickers, and they were chasing me through an endless hall. They could talk, unlike actual clickers. They just kept throwing blame at me, that I was a lousy father and a lousy survivor. I was the one that deserved to die not them. _

_well fuck you steffy fuck you isaac I'm glad you fuckers are gone you just weighed me down gave me unneeded burdens so I could fucking watch over you fuckers to make sure you could see the sun rise tommorrow _

_yu ungratfull ficks you act as tho you have sum write to judge you don't understand wat it was like all the presure all the responsobality _

_God I can feel it coming. My body is twitching more and more now. It's getting harder to think rationally, there's just anger and impatience flowing through whatever's left in my veins now. It's getton herder to right, think smertly like how things are spalled_

_Steffy and Isaac don't be mad at mee I didn't meen those sings I sayed I just feel meener just feel be gud for your mother Isaac_

_I don't know why I keep writing in this journal. I won't need it anymore soon._

_This is it, I guess. – Robert Drayton_

The Drifter closed the journal and set it aside. He looked back at the writhing infected. It raved at him, words that sounded like nonsense and words that sounded like "kill me stop the hurting make them stop talking to me" It clawed at him, but pinned down like it was the infected posed no threat. The Drifter looked at his gun, and then at the infected.

"I don't know if this is justice or mercy, but whatever it is, you will see them soon." He told the infected, but he doubted it understood what he said. He was bad with last words.

He pulled the trigger.

Pushing the bookcase over, he rummaged through the back pocket of Robert Drayton. Right as he had said in the journal, there were the keys to the Prius. Right as he had said, in the adjacent garage, there were cans of gasoline that would get the car running again. He wondered if there were anymore words to say to the departed Drayton family as he soon would be burglarizing their vehicle and whatever supplies was inside.

He had none.


	8. The Drifter: Meeting Burruss

He set the journal aside, casting it away towards the bloodied remains of Drayton. He contemplated taking it with him, to finish reading what he had skipped through but damn that notion. There had been enough notes left behind that he had read in the past, filling his heads with the thoughts and reflections of those he didn't know. These scattered fragments of lives moved on, he felt he had ingested enough of their subtle poison, the way these lives and people remained in his head long after he had cast their notes aside. What he had read was enough.

That night they camped outside below the stars. The stars were in the trillions tonight, light sent from beacons that had took billions and billions of years to arrive to the destination of vision and by the time that light had reached one's eye it would have already burned out long ago in actuality like a candle. The Drifter coldly chewed on his share of the meat, eating sparely. The rest of his group, the lot of them all drifters in their own right, took the bounty of the beef. The Drifter leaned against the door of the car as he watched the muted sparks of the fire erected glisten like a fog-illuminated lighthouse. He tossed in a twig, stared solemnly as the wood went up in flames and the fire briefly shot up with life once more. Fire, he thought, was like life. Living and dying simultaneously.

The dog, Connor, lay next to him. It sat with a paw covering one of its eyes. Occasionally it moved and made a small grunt as its body pulsed with breath.

"Hey, Layton." Helena. The tall girl who was adept enough with the bow and arrow.

"What is it?" He found himself thinking about Hannah. His little sister, the only member of his familial clan that he thought, that there was a faint possibility still walked the Earth. The rest of his kin had moved on, whether they wished to or not. Jordan like him fought for FEDRA as a proud member of the US Military but he had never lived long enough to question the morality of his work. The Fireflies had seen to that. Father and mother were both dead. Infections, suicides, a little bit of both. But Hannah… he had lost touch with her and he had never found out what happened to her. He was in Chicago, she in Los Angeles. It took them about two weeks to deliver the letter she had written for him from her zone to his. That had been well over a decade ago. He didn't really know what had happened to LA since, aside from wild rumors he had heard. The Drifter often assumed Hannah was dead like the rest. But sometimes…

"I was just a bit concerned. You don't seem to be too happy, even by your joyous standards. What was in there? The barn, since you did tell all of us not to follow and none of us have taken even a peek. But we did hear gunshots…"

"Just one infected man. Trapped beneath overturned furniture, unable to fend for itself or get at me. His family, or their corpses to be precise, were nearby. Bullet holes in their heads and an emptied gun nearby. I read through his personal journal. I shouldn't have… that was one of my own self-guidelines. Never read through the thoughts of others. But I think I'm losing my touch. And I thought to myself…"

"What?"

"Let's just say that either you eat the world and down that bastard whole or the world eats you raw and swallows you without chewing. I don't know what I am anymore. If I'm doing the eating or if I'm being eating slowly without realizing it."

"I'm not a psychiatrist. I don't' think I can help you, with… with whatever your problem is."

"I don't expect anyone to. These sort of issues… it's a road that I alone have to walk. But what about you?"

She seemed surprised, slightly offended. Her eyes gleamed at him under the pale night sky.

"We walk our own roads, roads only we can see in spite of the company we keep. Much of my road is behind me now, the clouds clearing. I've come to terms with what I've become, what I've lost, most of it at least. I'm ready now, to reach the end of my road even if it means I must fall to reach it. But what about you, Helena? What about your road?"

She reached into her bag. She rummaged around for a bit, before drawing something out of the zip hole. It was thin, round and metal, slightly bent and tarnished at the edges. It hung from a chain. The Drifter recognized it instantly. He had seen enough dead men and women with these hanging around their necks. The fire made light that bounced off and illuminated the insignia that dotted the whole of one side of the pendant. Believe in the Fireflies, he reminisced. And on the other side of the pendant Helena held, the one she forlornly gazed at, etched was

_Connor Sullivan 000254_

"I don't know. I told you that the Fireflies were his fight, not mine. But we were close… and I feel rotten to have abandoned my father's cause the way I have. I never got to say good-bye to him. I'm just not sure. I want to do something to honor his memory but if joining the Fireflies is the only option…" She told him as she gazed up to look at the others hanging at the opposite end of the campfire.

"Helena, you are your own woman. Your father was a good man, I'm sure of it, but he wouldn't have wanted his daughter to just toss her life at a struggle that wasn't hers. On the road ahead, we all have to make all own choices. Compromise, sacrifice, those are all choices we must often make. You do what you have to survive."

Her eyes lingered on Garrett Lin. She didn't respond to him.

"Do you like him?" He finally confronted her on it.

"I enjoyed it… when we were doing those things together. We have a lot in common but a lot of my repressed emotion and feeling were loosened with him. I just let too much of them out. I'm not ready for stuff like that again. It was just a one time thing, Layton." She told him, although he doubted the accuracy of her truthfulness.

"Are we going to say here long?" She changed the subject.

"We move on tomorrow. From here, we'll drive to Cupertino. And from there, wherever the road to nowhere takes us until we run out gas."

* * *

"Step out of your vehicle and lay whatever weapons you may have on the ground. On your knees, hands on your head. Make any sudden moves and I'll make sure my finger is the last thing you'll ever before my partner's bullet takes your head clean off."

The Drifter slowly unlocked the driver's door, shutting off the car's engine and removing the keys. As he pocketed the keys, orders continued to be barked at them over a megaphone. For Christ's sake, where had these survivalists scrounged up one of those? He did as they asked, taking his rifle and magnum and laying them down on the ground in front of him. He sat on his knees, slowly drawing his heads towards the back of his head. He could feel the heat of the sight trained on him. He always had doubts about the exact capability of these random survivalists and their skills with their arsenals but here he doubted there was much room for missing. In front of them was a large gate surrounded by a tall fence with wire at the top. There were remains of old FEDRA evacuation signs in front of the gate, where the two segments separated. Behind the fence were two guard outposts, with two unreceptive sentinels posted with weapons trained on the entirety of his group and the dog right now.

"On your knees. All of you. We begin shooting in five if you don't comply." Will hearing this, squeaked like a mouse and was done on his knees hands on head faster a thirty minutes or its free pizza delivery car.

"Look, buddy, we don't want any trouble. We just want to pass through safely, without any of you taking shots at us. Let us in and we'll be on our way and out quicker than you can count to three." The Drifter yelled back at the lady with the microphone. Dirty blonde hair clumped around her neck and shoulders, the flushed-face lady yelled back at him.

"Burruss will be the judge of that, one-eye. Until he gets here, stay put."

The other guard, shaggy bearded, took a walkie-talkie from out of his pocket and barked a few words. The Drifter caught "Burruss… situation at the… gates."

"What the hell are we going to do?" Garrett whispered to him.

"We play their game for now. Let's wait and see and maybe we'll be able to use these survivors to our advantage."

So they waited. His knees grew very uncomfortable. For a situation at the gate, Burruss sure took his leisurely time to arrive. The guards didn't seem to happy either, having to perpetually train their sights over the Drifter and his group.

Burruss eventually arrived. As Drayton had described him, he was a welt-built man with a 6'4 frame. The Drifter found himself wandering how he managed to get enough calories to maintain that muscle in a world where supplies were so scarce. Then he remembered that Drayton had mentioned in his journal that these survivors seemed to have enough surplus supplies to be easily willing to trade it away. No doubt that Burruss, the man with a shiny balding head and thick mustache between the nose and upper lips, managed to scrounge by and maintain his body just fine.

"I don't suppose that you happen to call the shots around here?" The Drifter called up to Burruss who picked his nose and flicked his fingers at Will. The Drifter remained crouched on his knees, hands held behind his head.

"You could say that much."

"We don't want much. Just a place to stay and regain our bearings for the moment. We don't mean no harm, we pledge to do no evil, speak no evil to you."

"Now I wasn't the sharpest cheese back in my old school before everything went to hell but I ain't no goddamn retard either. That car seems awfully familiar to me. Even got the same bullet holes in the same places and all. And the last time I checked, none of yous happened to be in that little car when I last saw it unless that fucking kid had a puberty jumpstart. So tell me, just how did you happen to acquire this vehicle, hmm? Through ambushes and a reservoir of bullets, hmm?"

The Drifter felt his heart sink at that. If Burruss suspected them of having killed the Drayton family and commandeering their vehicle, he would surely come to the conclusion that they were raiders with less than friendly intents. He should've kept the journal, if only for purposes of convincing. He was prepared to die at any moment now, that he knew in his mind, but like this…

"You got ten words or less to change the boss' current course of mind, one-eye. If you take eleven or fail, well let's just say the dog's going in the pot tonight." The dirty blonde laughed at the last bit. Her chuckle was like scraps of sandpaper being rammed down the throat.

"We met on the road, the family. Traded around."

"Traded for what? No one just gives away something as valuable as a functioning Toyota four-wheeler for some cans of crumb shit." Burruss demanded. His voice was awfully nasal and high-pitched, not too authoritative. It didn't fit his rugged appearance nor the position of power he so presumably occupied very well, the Drifter considered. He was reminded of the old Toho movies he saw in his childhood with their rubber suits, toy jets, and scale sets. The Japanese actors who opened their mouths only for a flow of words dubbed over by obvious Westerners to come streaming out.

"We were both in desperate binds. They needed batteries for their lights, extra ammunition, and extra foodstuffs in droves. And we needed a set of wheels to put some boosted progress on the way to our destination. So their need to live trumped their need to keep their hunk of metal around. Understand?"

Burruss had withdrawn his firearm, a sawn-off shotgun and was pointing it coldly at the Drifter. He glanced the muzzle at every one of them, including Connor. He seemed poised to pull the trigger, blast off one of their heads with a shell.

Then he lowered the gun, holstering the weapon. Burruss seemed just as disappointed as the Drifter was surprised.

"Alright, I'll gamble. But as long as you're in my safe zone, you'll abide by my rules. Open the gates, Gus!" He barked an order at some others who the Drifter did not see, presumably behind the gate and fence. There was a grinding, groaning creak as several ragged men in patchwork t-shirts and jeans unlocked the gates and pried the two segments open like a zip-lock bag.

Burruss then climbed down from the guard post to greet them personally with two simple commands. He strode ahead of his men and women, who all stepped back in recognition of his position in their hierarchy. Some of them even saluted him, like he was a fucking uniformed army sergeant.

"Before I can let any of you tourists inside, I'm going to ask for some things that I hope you'll be willing to comply with. Otherwise, we light you up quicker than fireworks on the Fourth of July."

"Go ahead." The Drifter answered for his group.

"We're going to have to confiscate your weapons. We'll have 'em locked up in one of our storage buildings. Perfectly secure and we'll return them as soon as you come up and tell me you're leaving."

"That much I can live with. What else?"

"Your car, we're confiscating it."

"Why the fuck do you want our car? You don't strike me as the adventurous outdoorsman, and neither does the rest of your yolk."

"Just in case you do get on our bad sides, I can't afford to have an easy getaway ride in your clutches lying around. I don't like liabilities or compromise. Knowing that will help you stay in the light the time you're here."

"We don't plan on sticking here for more than a day."

"Good."

The Drifter reluctantly handed the keys to the car over to Burruss. Burruss promptly tossed the keys to one of his gangly goons who nodded at his boss and clambered into the Camry, shutting the doors and switching on the engine. As the car flicked onto running life, several of Burruss' followers hopped back in surprise. These guards had never seen a working car before, having not been on the present shift line-up for the first time the car rumbled through their settlement.

The Camry drove out of sight.

"Now that that's all done, why don't I show you your royal quarters for the night? It's a moderate stroll from here to the high school, and I'm sure there's much you'll want to ask me, one-eye. Let's get to know each other, that way you can stay on my good side and I don't splatter your brains all over the sidewalk. Or that darn pretty girl's. Or the squint-eyed runt's. And especially that little greaser with the glasses. Looking at his pathetic face alone just makes me forget the value of ammo conservation..."

Will stiffened at this. Some of the guards escorting them with Burruss chortled at his discomfort.

It wasn't the end for him yet, the Drifter had realized. He was to walk his road for a just a little more, whether that little more happened to be a week or a decade. As his brother Jordan had once told him, "When the world is shit, sometimes all you can do is swallow up and try to make steak out of shit." So he walked.

* * *

**The end for this particular storyline is coming soon, within the planned span of 1-3 more chapters. This chapter itself was planned to be longer and incorporate part of what will be in the later 1-3 chapters. Layton's, the Drifter, story won't end in those chapters but it'll be put on hold for the next storyline which going with my original intent of this fanfiction will be a mostly self-contained snapshot of my interpretation of the world of The Last of Us.  
**

**The next storyline will begin on the other side of the country, and will be connected to this one through the appearance of a rather unmemorable unremarkable minor character introduced here. And believe me, there will be many of those sort of minor characters introduced in the next couple of chapters. On the plus side, there just might be a little Joel and Ellie cameo worked into "The Roadtrip"**

**I feel as if I've lost my luster, my inspirational spark, from when I first started this fanfic. The plot just staggers about, the characterization is stilted and inconsistent, the characters themselves are archetypes I feel. Perhaps, the next storyline will be different. If you beg to differ, please by all means leave your thoughts through PM or review. **

**This is the end of my ramblings for now.**


	9. The Drifter: Farewell

And so they walked.

They passed the husk of a supermarket, its front windows smashed in and the electric door riddled full of bullet marks. Empty baskets, once full of fruit, had long been looted and knocked over. Its insides looked just as empty and burned out as its front porch was. Scribbled in spray paint over the sign of the store was the message "God hath abandoned us all." Nearby, jammed between the sliding door of the pharmacy, was the decayed corpse of a child trampled. Another skeleton lay nearby, looking as if it had been stabbed many times through the ribs as a package was snatched from its clawing hands. The gaunt husk of gas station and mechanic shop, as if it had been engulfed by a great ball of fire. More remains, those who had been swallowed alive by the flames. Crashed cars decades exposed to the unforgiving mercy of the elements lay flipped over, lodged into the abandoned houses, or smashed into each other. Houses lay in varying states of ruin. Windows boarded up, front doors kicked down, plants growing out of the mottled fur of an abandoned stuffed giraffe.

"What happened here?"

Burruss shrugged.

"Me and most of my crew, we lived in Sunnyvale when the area went to shit. I'm guessing there's not much different here from what happened to my town. Every man for themselves… only difference is that the military actually showed up here in time to evacuate before things were really burnt to the ground. By the time the ashes cleared and the bodies were piled up for the last time, most of us didn't want to stick in the heart of Sunnyvale any longer. We packed up whatever we could use and move on. We settled down along this stretch of road, using what was left behind by the army boys to fortify and make our stand here. We do a damn good job, clearing out all the infected and fighting off any hostiles who think they can waltz in and nab our goods."

"You have a lot of guns?"

"There were some military-grade shits like assault rifles and semi-auto snipers when we got here but we long ran out of bullets for those. Serve now as window dressing and scraps to haggle with. Now, the heaviest things we got are hunting rifles and shotguns. Not the most efficient and easy to use, but they do the job. Most of our trade is done in ammo. Other sorts of supplies… we can manage. Some of us have managed to get a veggie garden going. We keep dem guns all locked up in one of the school buildings for storage. Ha, isn't that ironic. "

"You need to use those guns a lot?"

"My guards give you the wrong impression? We don't exactly welcome with arms wide open but we ain't a bunch of crazies like those mofos who overthrew LA who'd kill you for your shoes."

"Any hostile factions nearby? We encountered our fair share on the way here. Lost our best man to their bullets."

"Nothing we can't scare off with the guns we have. Most bandits, they learn quickly to leave us alone. But there is something troubling. Recently, there have been these people outside the perimeter, just mere inches from the 'you cross, we shoot' boundary. They all wear the same sorta green jackets, all peering at us with binoculars. Scouts for someone, trying to gauge us. At the council, some of us have discussed shooting but I don't think its right to start firing them leads yet. Just in case they do turn out to be too big for me and my boys to handle."

"We have a dog with us. Perhaps Connor could pick up their scent, help you tail them to their hideout."

"Appreciate the gesture, one-eye, but we don't need your help round these parts. Anything capable of troubling us, we handle our style."

Eventually, they reached the high school. Painted on the wall was the chipping paint of the school mascot, a dashing stallion. A barricade had been set up with overturned trucks and buses, with complementing stretches of barbed wire. A crashed helicopter was lodged in the rooftop of the building marked library. The dead body of a helmeted man, his body draped in military police identification, was leaning out of one of the bus windows feet dangling out like someone big and strong had rammed him through. Nearby was the corpse of someone wearing a two-piece board over their chest and back. Scribbled in large blood-red font that had turned murky and distorted over the years was 'the end is nigh'. The cadaver looked as if it had been beaten on by something blunt like a pipe and then trampled over by a mob. There had been some fighting, some rioting in the chaos as what could be salvaged was evacuated.

"Here, take this." Burruss tossed the Drifter a small key. "The science building is where you'll be staying."

Burruss left them alone, walking back the way they had come. The Drifter and his group continued into the school, strolling past the muddled chaos and ruins that had once been a hall of education. Walking through the quad, they saw some more Homesteaders. The native survivalists regarded them with cold disdain, staring at the group with beady rat eyes as they squinted through their cigarette smoke. Set up in front of a building with a letter sign that had fallen apart so it only read 'Cafria' was a miniature shooting range. In lieu of bull's-eyes were decapitated clicker heads.

"Hey boss, why don't you give it a shot?" Garrett asked. The Drifter shrugged. Why not? Best to keep the nerves sharp and prepared. He cocked his magnum, staring down the sights at the middle clicker head. On the board behind it were the holes of many bullets that had been fired but missed. Steadying his aim, he pulled the trigger and a bullet burst. It blasted the clicker's head clean off its pedestal, prompting slow clapping from even the Homesteaders observing.

* * *

The Drifter brushed his hand over the table, wiping away a thick arc of dust. He looked over his palm. The lines and creases covered in two decades worth of grime. He wondered. What fortunes and destinies lay in his palm. The table obviously, nor the rest of the abandoned chemistry classroom, had been used in a long time. There were still posters for laboratory safety hanging on the walls. He set his bag down. Tried the back-door to the room. Upper half had been smashed in. Didn't work. Broken glass of flasks and beakers everywhere, scattered safety goggles chipped. He doubted there was anything left of use here. Oh well, no schoolmade crystal meth for him.

"Goddamn… cheap shits couldn't even afford to set up a couple of mats." Will commented. He apprehensively looked at a cobweb consumed sink. Beneath the webs was a cracked ballpoint pen and crumpled sheets of paper. A large spider, legs winding and hairy, crawled along the dirt-caked window. Melinda shook her head, crushed it with her elbow.

"Well… they may have confiscated our guns but they didn't confiscate our rolls. So why you upset?" The Drifter questioned him. Will didn't answer. Helena and Garrett were at opposite ends of the room, searching for anything worthwhile. They tossed aside dusty tomes, chipped equipment, but kept nothing. Any of the chemicals which could have been used were in the backroom, which fitting to their luck was sealed off by wreckage.

"Exactly."

The Drifter looked around the derelict classroom, rubbing his one eye. He thought about what this classroom might have looked like right before the pandemic hit, and he thought with fond melancholy to his own education. Perhaps he was right that those days would never return, that hunting and scavenging had once again replaced arithmetic and reading as the mainstays of everyday life. It was a wound that society would never mend… but he admit that society had adapted to the new order in more ways than one. There were those who would roast their own infants over spits, yes, but there were still communities of cooperative folk who looked out for each other. What was he? A question posed that he never tried to answer. What he knew that Burruss and the rest of his enclave had done a fine job preserving themselves for god knows how long, much longer than he had kept this group under his wing and with far fewer losses. An idea, a notion undermining but feasible, of becoming the lone drifter once more. Limping across the ruins of a notion and nation, walking until the day he fell and moved no more.

"I need to go outside."

* * *

"Layton, is something wrong?" Garrett asked him. Layton, the Drifter, sat on the pitcher's mound on the school baseball diamond. With no one left to take care of the grounds, true nature had slowly overcome the turf to reclaim another piece of man's engineering for itself. Layton looked up at Garrett, stared slowly into him. To the young survivor, the leader seemed hesitant. Reluctant to share something very personal to him but eventually Layton talked.

"I think this is where we part ways."

"Shit man… are you joking or what?"

"Have I ever struck you as the joke telling type?"

"Sometimes, Layton but that doesn't matter. What matters is why the hell are you running out on us now, after all we've been through?"

"I'm not running. I'm doing you all a favor. The longer you stay with me… you know what happened to Cutter? The dissent and the desertions. With Burruss, you will at least have a chance. They have their shit down here. You will live with them. But with me…"

"Cutter and Jake, they aren't your fault. When will you see that? Why the hell am I the one telling you this? You're the veteran, we're the fucking serfs. Without you, we would have croaked years ago with no big smart leader type to hold us together. You even taught me how to fire bows and rifles properly. Would I still be here if you hadn't? Big fucking not likely."

"I'm not going to get you killed over some selfish agenda of mine. You have all the time in the world… perhaps I do to but I feel that my hourglass is at its final grains. I've been across half the fucking country in twenty years. I've seen all sorts of sights, done all sorts of shit that would have turned my hair white had I basic humanity to spare."

"What the fuck do you mean?"

"I'm going south, to Los Angeles."

"You're fucking kidding me. You know how long of a walk that is?"

"Yes. But it is a loose end that I must tie up. To see if I still have something worth living for in this world."

* * *

The dog bounded out from the gates just as they closed behind him with a creaking moan. It panted after him, enthusiastically bounding until it had finally caught up with Layton. He smiled at the dog as it wagged its tail.

"Couldn't stand to let me wander off all by myself, even though that's what I wanted to do, huh?"

The dog seemed to nod.

Layton took a look back at the sentry post. The remnants, last of his briefly lived group, gazed at him. Garrett walked away with a farewell wave, shaking his head as he disappeared from Layton's sight. Will shrugged, although he seemed uneasy. The greasy man had seemed intimidated by the attitude of Burruss and the Homesteaders when they first arrived in Cupertino. Melinda was not present. Helena was last to go. She opened her mouth, and then closed it. She settled for giving him the finger. He decided he deserved it, nodded and gave her thumbs up.

"Well Connor…" The dog perked up.

"Even on the loneliest of roads it always seems that I never really was alone."

The dog barked and the two walked off into the distance until they were nothing more than blips on the abandoned horizon.

Just a few miles later he ran into them.

Belching smoke from exhaust pipes, the pick-up truck lurched towards the man and the dog. Powerful but slow. One front light broken, other functioning. People male and female walked alongside it, almost as many riding in its back. Some patrolled the sides, escorting the truck on piercing hogs. They wore green uniforms, like those Burruss had described. Vests, overcoats, jackets, but the color was uniform. All carrying guns. Sidearms such as silenced .45 pistols and .45-70 revolvers. Long guns, semi-automatic and fully automatic. One woman in a gas mask had a flamethrower strapped to her back, nozzle at ready. Sniper rifles, military-grade.

Gauging the situation, Layton held his hands up in the air. The truck screeched to a stop. One of the riders dismounted a chopper and walked towards Layton. The man wore a green starred beret, clean-shaven with no a scrap of facial hair to be found. His black hair was roughly combed, tied back into a small-ponytail. His jacket frayed at the top, pulled up by the sleeves, black shirt underneath. He wore a bandoleer and a semi-automatic assault rifle across his shoulder. In his hands was a .45-70 revolver. His skin was bronze, looking somewhat Mexican or Native American.

"You come from the Cupertino outpost?" The green jacket asked him.

"Yes, but I'm not part of their group. I was just passing through… to my next destination. Los Angeles."

"Good for you. Not for them… but that's nothing you need to know. Say… LA? Hate to break it to you, but you're headed in the wrong direction. But you seem good enough… such a rarity among the living these days. It's dangerous to go alone. Take this."

He handed Layton a small map of the state road system. "As long as you keep reading the road signs you should make it to LA… provided the world doesn't eat you up first."

"Thanks… I guess… you a Firefly?" Layton asked as he pointed towards the insignia branded on his right sleeve. The green jacket stared at it, shook his head.

"Once… but times changed as I made my way west. Think of ourselves more like a pack of hornets that love to sting than a beacon of light the Fireflies love to pass themselves as. I don't always agree with what the boss makes us do but it's for a good cause, isn't it? Restoring order with a bit of force where words can't cut it."

"No matter what you tell yourself, Beret boy, you're just chasing after butterflies."

"Not the friendliest sort, are you? But still... that is a pretty cool looking eyepatch you're wearing. You're different from the rest of the vagrants: the Mavericks, Banditos, and the Homesteaders. Here, take this as well. Used to be mine, but I don't have much use for it now other than nostalgic curiosities. Sun down there is harsh, need a little something to shield yourself from the radiation."

The patrol of Hornets moved on. Layton looked down at the object pressed into his hands, a mechanic's cap. He put it on.

Layton drifted, continuing on his long walk south, dog by his side.

* * *

When the lights of civilization dimmed, he had been there at the frontlines. And from there when the military retreated into the cities that remained, he had become a drifter, roaming across the ruins of America looking out for only himself. There was a group of people he had been with once, no longer alone and all of them drifters in their own right? Hadn't there… he had trouble remembering. He was alone now, the lonesome drifter. The dog had moved on long ago, no longer able to walk.

He passed through Bakersfield, the nearby fields overgrown into forests of wild corn stalks.

A ragged beard hung down from his chin. His hair was roughly cut with a knife's handiwork. Battered skeleton of a mechanic's cap on his head, torn clothes clinging to him. One grim bloodshot eye, the other long gone covered up by a black eyepatch. The shotgun had fired its last shell months past. TYo preserve its usefulness, a saw blade he had found scavenging had been fastened to it like a bayonet. The magnum's chamber was empty of lead, filled with carved wood. His nails were long, uncared for, darkened by dirt. His stomach, bare, screamed for nourishment. Even a cockroach would suffice.

He stumbled from out of the barren hills filled with dead woods. His legs felt soft, begging him to lay down and rest for a long time.

Hannah. Hannah. Hannah. The name of his younger sister ran on repeat, the record broken skipping and repeating for all of eternity. Everyone he knew and cared for was dead. Except for her. He had never heard from her as the country went dark. And he would reach the City of Angels to reunite with her. And then, when he found what was left, he would finally be able to choose. Between continuing on this road to nowhere or moving on.

Past gutted cars and the mummified bodies of the deceased. Past decaying fast food restaurants and gas stations, the emblems of a world that would never return. It was like a museum monument, to remind those who had remained of what had been lost and to taunt the new blood of an idyllic wonderland that they would never know.

One day he reached the outskirts of a city. He could see the husks of skyscrapers in the great beyond.

The sun slowly set.

A night sky dark with no stars. No city lights.

One more step, he urged himself to take. He wouldn't rest until he had found her. And he would never stop looking. He was tired of being the drifter, moving about with no purpose other than to live. He had forgotten so many things, friendship and family. He grunted as a spiraling crescendo of pain shot through his joints. He stumbled to the ground, onto his knees. Panting, he continued to crawl towards Los Angeles. He heard sounds of moaning, lips anticipating as rotten bits of flesh fell from their yellowed teeth. But maybe it was just his imagination.

Somewhere in the distance, he saw a beacon lit. Look to the light. Believe. But he blinked and there was no more light.

"Hannah... Hannah... Hannah..."

He was alone, forgotten but not for long.

The road to nowhere came to an end.

* * *

**I apologize if you were constantly going WHAT THE F_ THIS SUCKS throughout this entire chapter. Truth be told, I ran out of ideas with what to do and as you can see, the conclusion is a rushed mess even with the month or so I spent agonizingly writing this with the block in my way. 2/3rd of the stuff I had planned was cut or hastily altered. For the next story of mine, Road Trip, I am going to take another long break and replay the game. Try and recapture the spirit that was so absent from these past couple of chapters. And I will make up for the untapped potential that was Roads to Nowhere, I promise, dear readers.  
**

**I guess that I won't live up to the my original promises - that this would be a single-contained publication with multiple storylines. I think it's ultimately for the best if I cut RtN's head off now. Think of this as a stumbling block, practice on the way to pumping out something halfway decent. **

**Until then, sayonara.  
**


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